
Class _B?£03 

Book_Jrt3 



LECTURES 



THE ENGLISH POETS. 



BY WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



HfyitH SEtfttum. 

EDITED BY HIS SON. 






LONDON: JOHN TEMPLEMAN, 
248, REGENT STREET. 



— NJ 



r 



JK^ 3 
H3 



ENS LEY, 



B INTER, POKING. 



TO 



BARRY CORNWALL, 



WHOM THE AUTHOR OF THESE LECTURES 



ESTEEMED AS A MAN 



AND ADMIRED AS A POET, 



€fy$ Volume te UeSuatrif. 



CONTENTS. 

♦ 

LECTURE I. page 

INTRODUCTORY. — ON POETRY IN GENERAL . . 1 

LECTURE II. 

ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER ....... 38 

LECTURE III. 

ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON ...... 82 

LECTURE IV. 

ON DRYDEN AND POPE ........ 132 

LECTURE V. 

ON THOMSON AND COWPER 164 

LECTURE VI. 

ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, &C. . . .201 

LECTURE VII. 

ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS . 240 

LECTURE VIII. 

ON THE LIVING POETS 278 



APPENDIX :— No. I. ........ 323 

No. II. ...'... . 333 

No. Ill 343 

No. IV 367 



LECTURES 

ON 

THE ENGLISH POETS. 

LECTURE I.— INTRODUCTORY. 
ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

The best general notion which I can give of 
poetry is that it is the natural impression 
of any object or event, by its vividness exci- 
ting an involuntary movement of imagination 
and passion, and producing, by sympathy, a 
certain modulation of the voice, or sounds, 
expressing it. 

In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of 
the subject-matter of it, next of the forms of 
expression to which it gives birth, and after- 
wards of its connection with harmony of sound. 

Poetry is the language of the imagination 
and the passions. It relates to whatever gives 
immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. 
It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of 



^ ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

men ; for nothing but what so comes home to 
them in the most general and intelligible shape 
can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the 
universal language which the heart hoids with 
nature and itself. He who has a contempt for 
poetry cannot have much respect for himself, 
or for any thing else. It is not a mere frivolous 
accomplishment (as some persons have been 
led to imagine), the trifling amusement of a 
few idle readers or leisure hours — it has been 
the study and delight of mankind in all ages. 
Many people suppose that poetry is something 
to be found only in books, contained in lines 
of ten syllables, with like endings : but where- 
ever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or 
harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, 
in the growth of a flower, that " spreads its 
sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty 
to the sun/' — there is poetry, in its birth. If 
history is a grave study, poetry may be said to 
be a graver : its materials lie deeper, and are 
spread wider. History treats, for the most 
part, of the cumbrous and unwieldly masses 
of things, the empty cases in which the affairs 
of the world are packed, under the heads of 
intrigue or war, in different states, and from 
century to century: but there is no thought or 
feeling that can have entered into the mind of 
man, which he would be eager to communi- 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 



cate to others, or which they would listen to 
with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. 
It is not a branch of authorship : it is " the 
stuff of which our life is made." The rest is 
" mere oblivion/ 5 a dead letter : for all that is 
worth remembering in life is the poetry of it. 
Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, 
hatred is poetry ; contempt, jealousy, remorse, 
admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, 
are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle 
within us that expands, rarefies, refines, raises 
our whole being : without it " mair's life is 
poor as beasts 5 ." Man is a poetical animal : 
and those of us who do not study the princi- 
ples of poetry act upon them all our lives, like 
Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who had 
always spoken prose without knowing it. The 
child is a poet, in fact, when he first plays at 
hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of Jack the 
Giant-killer ; the shepherd-boy is a poet,when 
he first crow 7 ns his mistress with a garland of 
flowers ; the countryman, when he stops to 
look at the rainbow : the city-apprentice, when 
he gazes after the Lord-Mayor's show ; the 
miser, when he hugs his gold ; the courtier, 
who builds his hopes upon a smile ; the savage, 
who paints his idol with blood ; the slave, who 
worships a tyrant, or the tyrant, who fancies 
himself a god ;— the vain, the ambitious, the 

b 2 



4 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

proud, the choleric man, the hero and the 
coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and 
the poor, the young and the old, all live in a 
world of their own making ; and the poet does 
no more than describe what all the others think 
and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is 
folly and madness at second hand. " There 
is warrant for it." Poets alone have not " such 
seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that 
apprehend more than cooler reason 5 ' can. 

w The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 

Are of imagination all compact. 

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ; 

The madman. While the lover, all as frantic, 

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. 

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 

Doth glance from heav'nto earth,from earth to heav'n ; 

And, as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name. 

Such tricks hath strong imagination." 

If poetry is a dream, the business of life is 
much the same. If it is a fiction, made up of 
what we wish things to be, and fancy that they 
are, because we wish them so, there is no other 
nor better reality. Ariosto has described the 
loves of Angelica and Medoro : but was not 
Medoro, who carved the name of his mistress 
on the barks of trees, as much enamoured of 
her charms as he ? Homer has celebrated the 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 



anger of Achilles : but was not the hero as 
mad as the poet ? Plato banished the poets from 
his Commonwealth, lest their descriptions of 
the natural man should spoil his mathematical 
man, who was to be without passions and affec- 
tions, who was neither to laugh nor weep, to 
feel sorrow nor anger, to be cast down nor 
elated by any thing. This was a chimera, 
however, which never existed but in the brain 
of the inventor ; and Homer's poetical world 
has outlived Plato's philosophical Republic. 

Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but 
the imagination and the passions are a part of 
man's nature. We shape things according to 
our wishes and fancies, without poetry ; but 
poetry is the most emphatical language that 
can be found for those creations of the mind 
" which ecstacy is very cunning in." Neither 
a mere description of natural objects, nor a 
mere delineation of natural feelings, however 
distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end 
and aim of poetry, without the heightenings 
of the imagination. The light of poetry is 
not only a direct but also a reflected light, that, 
while it shews us the object, throws a spark- 
ling radiance on all around it : the flame of the 
passions, communicated to the imagination, re- 
veals to us, as with a flash of lightning, the in- 
most recesses of thought, and penetrates our 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 



whole being. Poetry represents forms chiefly 
as they suggest other forms ; feelings, as they 
suggest forms or other feelings. Poetry puts 
a spirit of life and motion into the universe. 
It describes the flowing, not the fixed. It 
does not define the limits of sense, nor an- 
alyze the distinctions of the understanding, 
but signifies the excess of the imagination 
beyond the actual or ordinary impression of 
any object or feeling. The poetical impres- 
sion of any object is that uneasy, exquisite 
sense of beauty or power that cannot be con- 
tained within itself; that is impatient of ail 
limit ; that (as flame bends to flame) strives 
to link itself to some other image of kindred 
beauty or grandeur ; to enshrine itself, as it 
were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to 
relieve the aching sense of pleasure by ex- 
pressing it in the boldest manner, and by the 
most striking examples of the same quality in 
other instances. Poetry, according to Lord 
Bacon, for this reason, " has something 
divine in it, because it raises the mind and 
hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the 
shows of things to the desires of the soul, 
instead of subjecting the soul to external 
things as reason and history do/' It is strictly 
the language of the imagination ; and the 
imagination is that faculty which represents 



OX POETRY IN GENERAL. 7 

objects, not as they are in themselves, but as 
they are moulded, by other thoughts and feel- 
ings, into an infinite variety of shapes and com- 
binations of power. This language is not the 
less true to nature because it is false in point 
of fact ; but so much the more true and na- 
tural, if it conveys the impression which the 
object under the influence of passion makes on 
the mind. Let an object, for instance, be 
presented to the senses in a state of agitation 
or fear — and the imagination will distort or 
magnify the object, and convert it into the 
likeness of whatever is most proper to encou- 
rage the fear. " Our eyes are made the fools " 
of our other faculties. This is the universal 
law of the imagination, 

" That if it would but apprehend some joy, 
It comprehends some bringer of that joy : 
Or in the night, imagining some fear, 
How easy is each bush suppos'd a bear !" 

When Iachimo says of Imogen, 

" — ■ The flame o' th' taper 

Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids 
To see the enclosed lights " — 

this passionate interpretation of the motion of 
the flame to accord with the speaker's own 
feelings is true poetry. The lover, equally 
with the poetj speaks of the auburn tresses of 
his mistress as locks of shining gold, because 



8 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

the least tinge of yellow in the hair has, from 
novelty and a sense of personal beauty, a 
more lustrous effect to the imagination than 
the purest gold. We compare a man of gi- 
gantic stature to a tower : not that he is any 
thing like so large, but because the excess of 
his size beyond what we are accustomed to ex- 
pect, or the usual size of things of the same 
class, produces by contrast a greater feeling of 
magnitude and ponderous strength than another 
object of ten times the same dimensions. The 
intensity of the feeling makes up for the dis- 
proportion of the objects. Things are equal 
to the imagination^ which have the power of 
affecting the mind with an equal degree of 
terror, admiration, delight, or love. When 
Lear calls upon the heavens to avenge his 
cause, " for they are old like him," there is 
nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime 
identification of his age with theirs ; for there 
is no other image which could do justice to 
the agonising sense of his wrongs and his 
despair ! 

Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of 
fancy and feeling. As, in describing natural 
objects, it impregnates sensible impressions 
with the forms of fancy, so it describes the 
feelings of pleasure or pain, by blending 
them with the strongest movements of passion, 



OX POETRY IN GENERAL. y 

and the most striking forms of nature. Tragic 
poetry, which is the most impassioned species 
of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the 
utmost point of sublimity or pathos, by all 
the force of comparison or contrast ; loses the 
sense of present suffering in the imaginary 
exaggeration of it ; exhausts the terror or pity 
by an unlimited indulgence of it ; grapples 
with impossibilities in its desperate impa- 
tience of restraint ; throws us back upon the 
past, forward into the future ; brings every 
moment of our being or object of nature in 
startling review before us ; and, in the rapid 
whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of 
woe to the highest contemplations on human 
life. When Lear says, of Edgar, u Nothing 
but his unkind daughters could have brought 
him to this ;" what a bewildered amazement, 
what a wrench of the imagination, that cannot 
be brought to conceive of any other cause of 
misery than that which has bowed it down, 
and absorbs all other sorrow in its ow 7 n ! His 
sorrow, like a flood, supplies the sources of 
all other sorrow 7 . Again, when he exclaims 
in the mad scene, " The little dogs and 
all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, 
they bark at me !" it is passion lending oc- 
casion to imagination to make every creature 
in league against him, conjuring up ingra- 



10 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

titude and insult in their least looked-for and 
most galling shapes, searching every thread 
and fibre of his heart, and finding out the last 
remaining image of respect or attachment in 
the bottom of his breast, only to torture and 
kill it! In like manner, the " So 1 am" of 
Cordelia gushes from her heart like a torrent 
of tears, relieving it of a weight of love and 
of supposed ingratitude, which had pressed 
upon it for years. What a fine return of the 
passion upon itself is that in Othello — with 
what a mingled agony of regret and despair 
he clings to the last traces of departed hap- 
piness — when he exclaims, 

" Oh now, for ever 



Farewell the tranquil mind. Farewell content ; 
Farewell the plumed troops and the big war, 
That make ambition virtue ! Oh farewell ! 
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, 
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, 
The royal banner, and all quality, 
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war ; 
And O, you mortal engines, whose rude throats 
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 
Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone L" 

How his passion lashes itself up and swells 
and rages like a tide in its sounding course, 
when, in answer to the doubts expressed of his 
returning love, he says, 

' 6 Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea, 
Whose icy current and compulsive course 



OX POETRY IN GENERAL. II 

Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
To the Propontic and the Hellespont : 
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, 
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, 
Till that a capable and wide revenge 
Swallow them up."— 

The climax of his expostulation afterwards 
with Desdemona is at that line, 

" But there, where I had garner'd up my heart, 
To be discarded thence !" 

One mode in which the dramatic exhibition 
of passion excites our sympathy without 
raising our disgust is that, in proportion as it 
sharpens the edge of calamity and disappoint- 
ment, it strengthens the desire of good. It 
enhances our consciousness of the blessing, 
by making us sensible of the magnitude of 
the loss. The storm of passion lays bare and 
shews us the rich depths of the human soul : 
the whole of our existence, the sum total of 
our passions and pursuits, of that which we 
desire, and that which we dread, is brought 
before us by contrast ; the action and re-action 
are equal ; the keenness of immediate suffering 
only gives us a more intense aspiration after, 
and a more intimate participation with, the 
antagonist world of good ; makes us drink 
deeper of the cup of human life ; tugs at 
the heart-strings ; loosens the pressure about 



12 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

them ; and calls the springs of thought 
and feeling into play with tenfold force. 

Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the 
moral and intellectual part of our nature, as 
well as of the sensitive — of the desire to know, 
the will to act, and the power to feel ; and 
ought to appeal to these different parts of 
our constitution, in order to be perfect. The 
domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought 
to be the most natural, is in this sense the 
least so, because it appeals almost exclusively 
to one of these faculties, our sensibility. The 
tragedies of Moore and Lillo, for this reason, 
however affecting at the time, oppress and lie 
like a dead weight upon the mind, a load of 
misery which it is unable to throw off: the 
tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, 
stirs our inmost affections ; abstracts evil from 
itself by combining it with all the forms of 
imagination, and with the deepest workings 
of the heart, and rouses the whole man with- 
in us. 

The pleasure, however, derived from tragic 
poetry is not any thing peculiar to it as poetry, 
as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is not an 
anomaly of the imagination. It has its source 
and ground-work in the common love of 
strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, 
people flock to see a tragedy ; but, if there 



OX POETRY IX GENERAL. 13 

were a public execution in the next street, 
the theatre would very soon be empty. It is 
not then the difference between fiction and 
reality that solves the difficulty. Children 
are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and 
witches in plain prose : nor do the hawkers of 
full, true, and particular accounts of murders 
and executions about the streets find it neces- 
sary to have them turned into penny ballads, 
before they can dispose of these interesting and 
authentic documents. The grave politician 
drives a thriving trade of abuse and calumnies 
poured out against those whom he makes his 
enemies for no other end than that he may 
live by them. The popular preacher makes 
less frequent mention of heaven than of hell. 
Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar 
sort of poetry or rhetoric. We are as fond of 
indulging our violent passions as of reading a 
description of those of others. We are as 
prone to make a torment of our fears as to 
luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked, 
Why we do so ? the best answer will be, Be- 
cause we cannot help it. The sense of power 
is as strong a principle in the mind as the 
love of pleasure. Objects of terror and pity 
exercise the same despotic control over it as 
those of love or beauty. It is as natural to 
hate as to love, to despise as to admire, 



14 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

to express our hatred or contempt, as our love 
or admiration. 

" Masterless passion sways us to the mood 
Of what it likes or loathes." 

Not that we like what we loathe ; but we like 
to indulge our hatred and scorn of it ; to dwell 
upon it, to exasperate our idea of it by every 
refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of 
illustration ; to make it a bugbear to ourselves, 
to point it out to others in all the splendour 
of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to 
stigmatise it by name, to grapple with it in 
thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect, to 
arm our will against it, to know the worst we 
have to contend with, and to contend with it 
to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest 
eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of 
expression that can be given to our conception 
of any thing, whether pleasurable or painful, 
mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. 
It is the perfect concidence of the image and 
the words with the feeling we have, and of 
which we cannot get rid in any other way, 
that gives an instant " satisfaction to the 
thought." This is equally the origin of wit 
and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the 
sublime and pathetic. When Pope says of 
the Lord Mayor's shew, — 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 15 

" Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, 
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more ;" 

— when Collins makes Danger, " with limbs 
of giant mould," 

"Throw him on the steep 

Of some loose hanging rock asleep •," 

when Lear calls out, in extreme anguish, 

" Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, 
How much more hideous shew'st thou in a child 
Than the sea-monster ! — " 

— the passion of contempt in the one case, of 
terror in the other, and of indignation in the 
last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing 
ourselves^ and shew 7 it to others as we feel it 
to exist, and as, in spite of ourselves, we are 
compelled to think of it. The imagination, 
by thus embodying and turning them to shape, 
gives an obvious relief to the indistinct and 
importunate cravings of the will. — We do not 
wish the thing to be so ; but we wish it to 
appear such as it is. For knowledge is con- 
scious power ; and the mind is no longer, in 
this case, the dupe, though it may be the 
victim, of vice or folly. 

Poetry is, in all its shapes, the language of 
the imagination and the passions, of fancy and 
will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd 
than the outcry which has been sometimes 



16 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

raised by frigid and pedantic critics, for re* 
ducing the language of poetry to the standard 
of common sense and reason : for the end and 
use of poetry, both at the first and now, 
was and is " to hold the mirror up to nature, 9 * 
seen through the medium of passion and imagi- 
nation, not divested of that medium by means 
of literal truth or abstract reason. The pain- 
ter of history might as well be required to re- 
present the face of a person who has just trod 
upon a serpent with the still-life expression of 
a common portrait, as the poet to describe the 
most striking and vivid impressions which 
things can be supposed to make upon the 
mind in the language of common conversation. 
Let who will strip nature of the colours and 
the shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound to 
do so ; the impressions of common sense and 
strong imagination, that is, of passion and in- 
difference, cannot be the same, and they must 
have a separate language to do justice to either. 
Objects must strike differently upon the mind, 
independently of what they are in themselves, 
as long as we have a different interest in them, 
as we see them in a different point of view, 
nearer or at a greater distance (morally or phy- 
sically speaking) from novelty, from old ac- 
quaintance, 'from our ignorance of them, from 
our fear of their consequences, from contrast, 



OX POETRY IN GENERAL. 17 

from unexpected likeness. We can no more 
take away the faculty of the imagination than 
we can see all objects without light or shade. 
Some things must dazzle us by their preterna- 
tural light ; others must hold us in suspense, 
and tempt our curiosity to explore their ob- 
scurity. Those who would dispel these various 
illusions, to give us their drab-coloured creation 
in their stead, are not very wise. Let the 
naturalist, if he will, catch the glow-worm, 
carry it home with him in a box, and find it 
next morning nothing but a little grey worm ; 
let the poet or the lover of poetry visit it at 
evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn 
and the crescent moon it has built itself a 
palace of emerald light. This is also one part of 
nature, one appearance which the glow-worm 
presents, and that not the least interesting ; so 
poetry is one part of the history of the human 
mind, though it is neither science nor philo- 
sophy. It cannot be concealed, however, that 
the progress of knowledge and refinement has 
a tendency to circumscribe the limits of the 
imagination, and to clip the wings of poetry. 
The province of the imagination is principally 
visionary, the unknown and undefined : the 
understanding restores things to their natural 
boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful 
pretensions. Hence the history of religious 

c 



18 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

and poetical enthusiasm is much the same ; 
and both have received a sensible shock from 
the progress of experimental philosophy. It 
is the undefined and uncommon that gives 
birth and scope to the imagination ; we can 
only fancy what we do not know. As in look- 
ing into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill 
them with what shapes we please, with ra- 
venous beasts, with caverns vast, and drear 
enchantments, so, in our ignorance of the world 
about us, we make gods or devils of the first 
object we see, and set no bounds to the wil- 
ful suggestions of our hopes and fears. 

" And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
Hang on each leaf, and cling to every bough." 

There can never be another Jacob's dream. 
Since that time the heavens have gone farther 
off, and grown astronomical. They have be- 
come averse to the imagination, nor will they 
return to us on the squares of the distances, 
or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rem- 
b rant's picture brings the matter nearer to 
us. — It is not only the progress of mechanical 
knowledge, but the necessary advances of civi- 
lization, that are unfavourable to the spirit of 
poetry. We not only stand in less awe of the 
preternatural world, but we can calculate more 
surely, and look with more indifference, upon 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 19 

the regular routine of this. The heroes of 
the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters 
and giants. At present we are less exposed 
to the vicissitudes of good or evil, to the incur- 
sions of wild beasts or u bandit fierce/* or to 
the unmitigated furv of the elements. The 
time has been that " our fell of hair would at 
a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in 
it. 53 But the police spoils all ; and we now 
hardly so much as dream of a midnight mur- 
der. Macbeth is only tolerated in this coun- 
try for the sake of the music ; and in the 
United States of America, where the philoso- 
phical principles of government are carried 
still farther in theory and practice, we find 
that the Beggar's Opera is hooted from the 
stage. Society, by degrees, is constructed 
into a machine that carries us safely and insi- 
pidly from one end of life to the other, in a 
very comfortable prose style. 

" Obscurity her curtain round them drew, 
And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung." 

The remarks which have been here made 
would, in some measure, lead to a solution of 
the question of the comparative merits of paint- 
ing and poetry. I do not mean to give any 
preference, but it should seem that the argu- 

c 2 



20 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

ment, which has been sometimes set up, that 
painting must affect the imagination more 
strongly, because it represents the image more 
distinctly, is not well founded. We may as- 
sume, without much temerity, that poetry is 
more poetical than painting. When artists 
or connoisseurs talk on stilts about the poetry 
of painting, they show that they know little 
about poetry, and have little love for the art. 
Painting gives the object itself ; poetry 
what it implies. Painting embodies what 
a thing contains in itself : poetry suggests 
what exists out of it, in any manner connect- 
ed with it. But this last is the proper pro- 
vince of the imagination. Again, as it relates 
to passion, painting gives the event, poetry the 
progress of events : but it is during the pro- 
gress, in the interval of expectation and sus- 
pense, while our hopes and fears are strained 
to the highest pitch of breathless agony, that 
the pinch of the interest lies. 

" Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
And the first motion, all the interim is 
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. 
The mortal instruments are then in council ; 
And the state of man, like to a little kingdom, 
Suffers then the nature of an insurrection." 

But by the time that the picture is painted, 
all is over. Faces are the best part of a pic- 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 21 

ture ; but even faces are not what we chiefly 
remember in what interests us most. — But it 
may be asked then, Is there any thing better 
than Claude Lorraine's landscapes, than 
Titian's portraits, than Raphael's Cartoons, 
or the Greek statues ? Of the two first I shall 
say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque, 
rather than imaginative. Raphael's Cartoons 
are certainly the finest comments that ever 
were made on the Scriptures. Would their 
effect be the same if we were not acquainted 
with the text ? But the New Testament 
existed before the cartoons. There is one 
subject of which there is no cartoon, Christ 
washing the feet of the disciples the night be- 
fore his death. But that chapter does not need 
a commentary ! It is for want of some such 
resting - place for the imagination that the 
Greek statues are little else than specious 
forms. They are marble to the touch and to 
the heart. They have not an informing prin- 
ciple within them. In their faultless excellence 
they appear sufficient to themselves. By their 
beauty they are raised above the frailties of 
passion or suffering. By their beauty they are 
deified. But they are not objects of religious faith 
to us, and their forms are a reproach to com- 
mon humanity. They seem to have no sym- 
pathy with us, and not to want our admiration. 



c 22 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

Poetry in its matter and form is natural 
imagery or feeling, combined with passion 
and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it 
combines the ordinary use of language with 
musical expression. There is a question of 
long standing, in what the essence of poetry 
consists ; or what it is that determines why 
one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, 
another in verse. Milton has told us his idea 
of poetry in a single line : — 

u Thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers." 

As there are certain sounds that excite cer- 
tain movements, and the song and dance go to- 
gether, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts 
that lead to certain tones of voice, or modu- 
lations of sound, and change " the words of 
Mercury into the songs of Apollo." There is 
a striking instance of this adaptation of the 
movement of sound and rhythm to the sub- 
ject, in Spenser's description of the Satyrs 
accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus. 

" So from the ground she fearless doth arise, 
And walketh forth without suspect of crime. 
They, -all as glad as birds of joyous prime, 

Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round, 
Shouting and singing all a shepherd's rhyme ; 
And with green branches strewing all the ground, 
Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd. 



OX POETRY IN GENERAL. 23 

And all the waj- their merry pipes they sound, 
That all the woods and doubled echoes ring ; 

And with their horned feet do wear the ground, 
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring ; 

So towards old Sylvanus they her bring, 
Who, with the noise awaked, cometh out." 

Faery Queen^ b. i. e. vi. 

On the contrary, there is nothing either musi- 
cal or natural in the ordinary construction of 
language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary 
and conventional. Neither in the sounds 
themselves, which are the voluntary signs of 
certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrange- 
ments in common speech, is there any princi- 
ple of natural imitation, or correspondence to 
the individual ideas, or to the tone of feeling 
with which they are conveyed to others. The 
jerks, the breaks, the inequalities, and harsh- 
nesses of prose, are fatal to the flow of a poet- 
ical imagination, as a jolting road or a stum- 
bling horse disturbs the reverie of an absent 
man. But poetry makes these odds all even. 
It is the music of language, answering to the 
music of the mind, untying, as it were, " the 
secret soul of harmony. 5 ' Wherever any ob- 
ject takes such a hold of the mind as to make 
us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting 
the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a 
sentiment of enthusiasm ; — wherever a move- 
ment of imagination or passicn is impressed 



24 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong 
and repeat the emotion, to bring all other ob- 
jects into accord with it, and to give the same 
movement of harmony, sustained and continu- 
ous, or gradually varied according to the oc- 
casion, to the sounds that express it — this is 
poetry. The musical in sound is the sustain- 
ed and continuous ; the musical in thought is 
the sustained and continuous also. There is 
a near connection between music and deep- 
rooted passion. Mad people sing. As often 
as articulation passes naturally into intonation 
there poetry begins. Where one idea gives a 
tone and colour to others, where one feeling 
melts others into it, there can be no reason 
w hy the same principle should not be extended 
to the sounds by which the voice utters these 
emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and 
lines into each other. It is to supply the in- 
herent defect of harmony in the customary 
mechanism of language, to make the sound an 
echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a 
sort of echo to itself — to mingle the tide of 
verse, u the golden cadences of poetry/' with 
the tide of feeling, flowing and murmuring as 
it flows — in short, to take the language of the 
imagination from off the ground, and enable 
it to spread its wings where it may indulge 
its own impulses — 



OX POETRY IX GENERAL. 25 

u Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure deep of air — " 

without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted 
with the abruptnesses and petty obstacles, and 
discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry 
was invented. It is to common language what 
springs are to a carriage, or wings to feet. In 
ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony 
by the modulations of the voice : in poetry the 
same thing is done systematically by a regular 
collocation of syllables. It has been well ob- 
served, that every one who declaims warmly, 
or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a 
sort of blank verse or measured prose. The 
merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on 
his way " sounding always the increase of his 
winning." Every prose- writer has more or 
less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, 
who, when deprived of the regular mechanism 
of verse, seem to have no principle of modu- 
lation left in their writings. 

An excuse might be made for rhyme in the 
same manner. It is but fair that the ear should 
linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail it- 
self of the same brilliant coincidence and un- 
expected recurrence of syllables, that have been 
displayed in the invention and collocation of 
images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the 
memory ; and a man of wit and shrewdness 



26 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

has been heard to say that the only four good 
lines of poetry are the well-known ones which 
tell the number of days in the months of the 

year. 

" Thirty days hath September," &c. 

But if the jingle of names assists the memory, 
may it not also quicken the fancy? and there 
are other things worth having at our fingers' 
ends besides the contents of the almanac. — 
Pope's versification is tiresome, from its ex- 
cessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare^s 
blank verse is the perfection of dramatic 
dialogue. 

All is not poetry that passes for such : nor 
does verse make the whole difference between 
poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease 
to be poetry in a literal translation ; and 
Addison's Campaign has been very properly 
denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common 
prose differs from poetry, as treating for the 
most part either of such trite, familiar, and irk- 
some matters of fact as convey no extraordi- 
nary impulse to the imagination, or else of such 
difficult and laborious processes of the under- 
standing as do not admit of the wayward or 
violent movements either of the imagination 
or the passions. 

I will mention three works which come as 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 



near to poetry as possible without absolutely 
being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Progress, 
Robinson Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. 
Chaucer and Dryden have translated some of 
the last into English rhyme, but the essence 
and the power of poetry was there before. 
That which lifts the spirit above the earth, 
which draws the soul out of itself with in- 
describable longings, is poetry in kind, and 
generally fit to become so in name, by being 
"married to immortal verse. " If it is of the 
essence of poetry to strike and fix the imagina- 
tion, whether we will or no, to make the eye 
of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to 
be never thought of afterwards with indiffer- 
ence, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe may be 
permitted to pass for poets in their way. The 
mixture of fancy and reality in the Pilgrim's 
Progress was never equalled in any allegory. 
His pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet 
are on it. What zeal, what beauty, what truth 
of fiction ! What deep feeling in the descrip- 
tion of Christian's swimming across the water 
at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones 
within the gates, with wings at their backs 
and garlands on their heads, who are to wipe 
all tears from his eyes ! The waiter's genius, 
though not " dipped in dews of Castalie," was 
baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire, 



28 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

The prints in this book are no small part of it. 
If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island 
of Lemnos was a subject for the most beauti- 
ful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall we say 
to Robinson Crusoe in his ? Take the speech 
of the Greek hero on leaving his cave, beauti- 
ful as it is, and compare it with the reflections 
of the English adventurer in his solitary place 
of confinement. The thoughts of home, and 
of all from which he is for ever cut off, swell 
and press against his bosom, as the heaving 
ocean rolls its ceaseless tide against the rocky 
shore, and the very beatings of his heart be- 
come audible in the eternal silence that sur- 
rounds him. Thus he says : 

" As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for view- 
ing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition 
would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart 
would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, 
the deserts I was in ; and how I was a prisoner, locked up 
with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an unin- 
habited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the 
greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon 
me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, and weep 
like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of 
my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and 
look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this 
was still worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent 
myself in words, it would go off, and the grief, having ex- 
hausted itself, would abate." 

The story of his adventures would not make 



ON POETRY IX GENERAL, °9 

a poem like the Odyssey, it is true, but the 
relator had the true geuius of a poet. It has 
been made a question whether Richardson's 
romances are poetry ; and the answer, perhaps, 
is that they are not poetry, because they are not 
romance. The interest is worked up to an 
inconceivable height ; but it is by an infinite 
number of little things, by incessant labour 
and calls upon the attention, by a repetition of 
blows that have no rebound in them. The sym- 
pathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, 
but a tax. Nothing is unforced and sponta- 
neous. There is a want of elasticity and 
motion. The story does not "give an echo 
to the seat where love is throned." The heart 
does not answer of itself like a chord in music. 
The fancy does not run on before the waiter 
with breathless expectation, but is dragged 
along with an infinite number of pins and 
wheels, like those with which the Lilliputians 
dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace.— 
Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What 
sort of a figure would he cut, translated into 
an epic poem, by the side of Achilles ? Claris- 
sa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by- 
half. She is interesting in her ruffles, in her 
gloves, her samplers ? her aunts and uncles — 
she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. 
Such things, however intensely they may be 



30 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

brought home to us, are not conductors to the 
imagination. There is infinite truth and feel- 
ing in Richardson ; but it is extracted from a 
caput mortuum of circumstances : it does not 
evaporate of itself. His poetical genius is like 
Ariel confined in a pine-tree, and requires an 
artificial process to let it out. Shakspeare 
says — 

" Our poesy is as a gum 
Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame 
Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies 
Each bound it chafes."* 

I shall conclude this general account with 
some remarks on four of the principal works 
of poetry in the world, at different periods of 
history— Homer, the Bible, Dante, and, let me 
add, Ossian. In Homer, the principle of action 

* Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the 
vividness of the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse 
and dry, not natural, but artificial. The difference between 
poetry and eloquence is that the one is the eloquence of the 
imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence 
tries to persuade the will, and convince the reason : poetry 
produces its effect by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing is a 
subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in 
general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine 
in themselves, are not to the purpose, and do not carry on the 
argument. The French poetry wants the forms of the ima- 
gination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some 
of our own poetry, which has been most admired, is only 
poetry in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic 
diction. 



OX POETRY IN GENERAL. 31 

or life is predominant; in the Bible, the princi- 
ple q£ faith and the idea of Providence ; 
Dante is a personification of blind will ; and 
in Ossian we see the decayof life, and the fag- 
end of the world. Homer's poetry is the 
heroic: it is full of life and action : it is bright 
as the day, strong as a river. In the vigour 
of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects 
of nature, and enters into all the relations of 
social life. He saw many countries, and the 
manners of many men ; and he has brought 
them all together in his poem. He describes 
his heroes going to battle with a prodigality 
of life, arising from an exuberance of animal 
spirits ; we see them before us, their number, 
and their order of battle, poured out upon the 
plain, " all plumed like ostriches, like eagles 
newly bathed, wanton as goats^ wild as young 
bulls, youthful as May, and gorgeous as the 
sun at midsummer," covered with glittering 
armour, with dust and blood ; while the gods 
quaff their nectar in golden cups, or mingle in 
the fray : and the old men assembled on the 
walls of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen 
passes by them. The multitude of things in 
Homer is wonderful ; their splendour, their 
truth, their force, and variety. His poetry is, 
like his religion, the poetry of number and 



3 ( 2 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

form : he describes the bodies as well as the 
souls of men. 

The poetry of the Bible is that of imagina- 
tion and of faith : it is abstract and disem- 
bodied : it is not the poetry of form, but of 
power; not of multitude, but of immensity. 
It does not divide into many, but aggrandizes 
into one. Its ideas of nature are like its ideas 
of God. It is not the poetry of social life, 
but of solitude : each man seems alone in the 
world, with the original forms of nature, the 
rocks, the earth, and the sky. It is not the 
poetry of action or heroic enterprise, but of 
faith in a supreme Providence, and resignation 
to the power that governs the universe. As 
the idea of God v\as removed farther from hu- 
manity and a scattered polytheism, it became 
more profound and intense, as it became more 
universal, for the Infinite is present to every 
thing : " If we fly into the uttermost parts of 
the earth, it is there also ; if we turn to the 
east or the west, we cannot escape from it." 
Man is thus aggrandised in the image of his 
Maker. The history of the patriarchs is of 
this kind ; they are founders of a chosen race 
of people, the inheritors of the earth ; they 
exist in the generations which are to come 
after them*. Their poetry, like their religious 
creed, is vast, unformed, obscure, and infinite ; 



OX POETRY IN GEXERAL. 33 

a vision is upon it — an invisible hand is sus- 
pended over it. The spirit of the Christian 
religion consists in the glory hereafter to be 
revealed ; but in the Hebrew dispensation, 
Providence took an immediate share in the 
affairs of this life. Jacob's dream arose out of 
this intimate communion between heaven and 
earth : it was this that let down, in the sight 
of the youthful patriarch, a golden ladder 
from the sky to the earth, with angels ascend- 
ing and descending upon it, and shed a light 
upon the lonely place, which can never pass 
away. The story of Ruth, again, is as if all 
the depth of natural affection in the human 
race was involved in her breast. There are 
descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal 
of imagery, more intense in passion, than any 
thing in Homer, as that of the state of his. 
prosperity, and of the vision that came upon 
him by night. The metaphors in the Old 
Testament are more boldly figurative. Things 
were collected more into masses, and gave a 
greater momentum to the imagination. 

Dante was the father of modern poetry, 
and he may therefore claim a place in this 
connection. His poem is the first great step 
from Gothic darkness and barbarism ; and the 
struggle of thought in it to burst the thral- 
dom in which the human mind had been so 



34 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

long held, is felt in every page. He stood 
bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore 
which separates the ancient and the modern 
world ; and saw the glories of antiquity dawn- 
ing through the abyss of time, while revelation 
opened its passage to the other world. He 
was lost in wonder at what had been done 
before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante 
seems to have been indebted to the Bible for 
the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for the 
prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his 
poetry ; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His 
genius is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen 
heat of a furnace. He is power, passion, self- 
will personified. In all that relates to the 
descriptive or fanciful part of poetry he bears 
no comparison to many who had gone before, 
or who have come after, him ; but there is a 
gloomy abstraction in his conceptions which 
lies like a dead weight upon the mind ; a be- 
numbing stupor, a breathless awe, from the 
intensity of the impression ; a terrible obscu- 
rity, like that which oppresses us in dreams ; 
an identity of interest, which moulds every 
object to its own purposes, and clothes all 
things with the passions and imaginations of 
the human soul, — that make amends for all 
other deficiencies. The immediate objects he 
presents to the mind are not much in them- 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 



selves ; they want grandeur, beauty, and order ; 
but they become every thing by the force of 
the character he impresses upon them. His 
mind lends its own power to the objects 
which it contemplates, instead of borrowing 
it from them. He takes advantage even of 
the nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. 
His imagination peoples the shades of death, 
and broods over the silent air. He is the seve- 
rest of all writers, the most hard and impene- 
trable, the most opposite to the flowery and 
glittering; who relies most on his own power, 
and the sense of it in others, and who leaves 
most room to the imagination of his readers. 
Dante's only endeavour is to interest ; and 
he interests by exciting our sympathy with the 
emotion by which he is himself possessed. 
He does not place before us the objects by 
which that emotion has been created ; but he 
seizes on the attention, by shewing us the 
effect they produce on his feelings ; and his 
poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling and 
overwhelming sensation which is caught by 
gazing on the face of a person who has seen 
some object of horror. The improbability of 
the events, the abruptness and monotony in 
the Inferno, are excessive : but the interest 
never flags, from the continued earnestness of 
the author's mind. Dante's great power is 

d 2 



36 ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 

in combining internal feelings with external 
objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which 
that withering inscription is written, seems to 
be endowed with speech and consciousness, 
and to utter its dread warning, not without a 
sense of mortal woes. This author habitually 
unites the absolutely local and individual with 
the greatest wildness and mysticism. In the 
midst of the obscure and shadowy regions of 
the lower world, a tomb suddenly rises up 
with the inscription, " I am the tomb of Pope 
Anastasius the Sixth ;*' and half the person- 
ages whom he has crowded into the Inferno 
are his own acquaintance. All this perhaps 
tends to heighten the effect by the bold inte- 
mixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it 
were> to the individual knowledge and expe- 
rience of the reader. He affords few subjects 
for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic 
one, that of Count Ugolino, of which Michael 
Angelo made a bas - relief, and which Sir 
Joshua Reynolds ought not to have painted. 

Another writer whom I shall mention last, 
and whom I cannot persuade myself to think a 
mere modern in the ground-work, is Ossian. 
He is a feeling and a name that can never be 
destroyed in the minds of his readers. As 
Homer is the first vigour and lustihead, Ossian 
is the decay and old age of poetry. He lives 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 37 

only in the recollection and regret of the past. 
There is one impression which he conveys 
more entirely than all other poets, namely, 
the sense of privation, the loss of all things, 
of friends, of good name, of country — -he is 
even without God in the world. He converses 
only with the spirits of the departed ; with 
the motionless and silent clouds. The cold 
moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head ; 
the fox peeps out of the ruined tower ; the 
thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale ; 
and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand 
of age, as the tale of other times, passes over 
them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in 
the winter's wind ! The feeling of cheerless 
desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of 
existence, of the annihilation of the substance, 
and the clinging to the shadow of all things 
as in a mock embrace, is here perfect. In 
this way, the lamentation of Selma for the 
loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were 
indeed possible to shew that this writer was 
nothings it would only be another instance of 
mutability, another blank made, another void 
left in the heart, another confirmation of that 
feeling which makes him so often complain, 
" Roll on ; ye dark brown years, ye bring no 
joy on your wing to Ossian !" 



LECTURE II. 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Having, in the former Lecture, given some 
account of the nature of poetry in general, I 
shall proceed, in the next place, to a more 
particular consideration of the genius and his- 
tory of English poetry. I shall take, as the 
subject of the present lecture, Chaucer and 
Spenser, two out of four of the greatest names 
in poetry which this country has to boast. 
Both of them, however, were much indebted 
to the early poets of Italy, and may be con- 
sidered as belonging, in a certain degree, to 
the same school. The freedom and copious- 
ness with which our most original writers, in 
former periods, availed themselves of the 
productions of their predecessors, frequently 
transcribing whole passages, without scruple 
or acknowledgement, may appear contrary to 



OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 39 

the etiquette of modern literature, when the 
whole stock of poetical common-places has 
become public property, and no one is com- 
pelled to trade upon any particular author. 
But it is not so much a subject of wonder, at 
a time when to read and write was of itself an 
honorary distinction, when learning was almost 
as great a rarity as genius, and when, in fact, 
those who first transplanted the beauties of 
other languages into their own, might be con- 
sidered as public benefactors, and the foun- 
ders of a national literature. — There are poets 
older than Chaucer, and in the interval be- 
tween him and Spenser ; but their genius 
w r as not such as to place them in any point 
of comparison with either of these celebrated 
men ; and an inquiry into their particular 
merits or defects might seem rather to belong 
to the province of the antiquary than be 
thought generally interesting to the lovers of 
poetry in the present day. 

Chaucer (who has been very properly con- 
sidered as the father of English poetry) prece- 
ded Spenser by two centuries. He issu pposed 
to have been born in London, in the year 1328, 
during the reign of Edward III., and to have 
died in 1400, at the age of seventy-two. He 
received a learned education at one, or at both, 
of the Universities, and travelled early into 



40 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Italy, where he became thoroughly imbued 
with the spirit and excellences of the great 
Italian poets and prose-writers, Dante, Pe- 
trarch, and Boccaccio ; and is said to have had 
a personal interview with one of these, 
Petrarch. He was connected, by marriage, 
with the famous John of Gaunt, through 
whose interest he was introduced into several 
public employments. Chaucer was an active 
partisan, a religious reformer, and, from the 
share he took in some disturbances, on one 
occasion, he was obliged to fly the country. 
On his return, he was imprisoned, and made 
his peace with government, as it is said, by 
a discovery of his associates. Fortitude does 
not appear, at any time, to have been the dis- 
tinguishing virtue of poets.— There is, how- 
ever, an obvious similarity between the prac- 
tical turn of Chaucer's mind and restless im- 
patience of his character, and the tone of his 
writings. Yet it would be too much to attri- 
bute the one to the other as cause and effect : 
for Spenser, whose poetical temperament was 
as effeminate as Chaucer's was stern and mas- 
culine, was equally engaged in public affairs, 
and had mixed equally in the great world. So 
much does native disposition predominate over 
accidental circumstances, moulding them to 
its previous bent and purposes ! For, while 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 41 

Chaucer's intercourse with the busy world, 
and collision with the actual passions and con- 
flicting interests of others, seemed to brace 
the sinews of his understanding, and gave to 
his writings the air of a man who describes 
persons and things that he had known and 
been intimately concerned in ; the same op- 
portunities, operating on a differently consti- 
tuted frame, only served to alienate Spenser's 
mind the more from the " close pent-up 5 ' 
scenes of ordinary life, and to make him " rive 
their concealing continents," to give himself 
up to the unrestrained indulgence of " flowery 
tenderness." 

It is not possible for any two writers to be 
more opposite in this respect. Spenser de- 
lighted ill luxurious enjoyment ; Chaucer, in 
severe activity of mind. As Spenser was the 
most romantic and visionary, Chaucer was the 
most practical of all the great poets, the most 
a man of business and the world. His poetry- 
reads like history. Every thing has a down- 
right reality ; at least in the relator's mind. A 
simile, or a sentiment; is as if it were given in 
upon evidence. Thus he describes Cressid's 
first avowal of her love : 

" And as the new abashed nightingale, 
That stinteth first when she beginneth sing. 
When that she hearetn any herde's tale, 
Or in the hedges any wight stirring, 



42 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

And after, sicker, doth her voice outring ; 
Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent, 
Open'd her heart, and told him her intent." 

This is so true and natural, and beautifully 
simple, that the two things seem identified 
with each other. Again, it is said in the 
Knight's Tale— 

" Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day 5 
Till it felle ones in a morwe of May, 
That Emelie that fayrer was to sene 
Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene ; 
And fresher than the May with floures newe, 
For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe : 
I n'ot which was the finer of hem two." 

This scrupulousness about the literal prefer- 
ence, as if some question of matter of fact 
was at issue, is remarkable. I might mention 
that other, where he compares the meeting 
between Palamon and Arcite to a hunter wait- 
ing for a lion in a gap ;— 

" That stondeth at a gap with a spere, 
Whan hunted is the lion or the bere, 
And hereth him come rushing in the greves, 
And breking bothe the boughes and the leves :" — 

or that still finer one of Constance, when she 
is condemned to death : 

" Have ye not seen sometime a pale face 
(Among a prees) of him that hath been lad 
Toward his deth, whereas he geteth no grace, 
And swiche a colour in his face hath had, 
Men mighten know him that was so bestad, 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 43 

Amonges all the faces in that route. 

So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute.'* 

The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to 
be of the poet 5 s seeking, but a part of the 
necessary texture of the fable. He speaks of 
what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, 
the discrimination of one who relates what 
has happened to himself, or has had the best 
information from those who have been eye- 
witnesses of it. The strokes of his pencil 
always tell. He dwells only on the essential, 
on that which would be interesting to the per- 
sons really concerned : yet, as he never omits 
any material circumstance, he is prolix from 
the number of points on which he touches, 
without being diffuse on any one ; and is some- 
times tedious from the fidelity with which he 
adheres to his subject, as other writers are 
from the frequency of their digressions from 
it. The chain of his story is composed of a 
number of fine links, closely connected toge- 
ther, and rivetted by a single blow. There is 
an instance of the minuteness which he intro- 
duces into his most serious descriptions in his 
account of Palamon when left alone in his cell : 

" Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour 
Resouned of his yelling and clamour : 
The pure fetters on his shinnes grete 
Were of his bitter salte teres wete." 



44 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

The mention of this last circumstance looks 
like a part of the instructions he had to follow, 
which he had no discretionary power to leave 
out or introduce at pleasure. He is content- 
ed to find grace and beauty in truth. He 
exhibits for the most part the naked object, 
with little drapery thrown over it. His me- 
taphors, which are few, are not for ornament, 
but use, and as like as possible to the things 
themselves. He does not affect to shew his 
power over the reader's mind, but the power 
which his subject has over his own. The 
readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly 
what the persons he describes must have felt 
than perhaps those of any other poet. His 
sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the 
poet's fancy, but founded on the natural im- 
pulses and habitual prejudices of the charac- 
ters he has to represent. There is an inve- 
teracy of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which 
never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they 
do or say. There is no artificial, pompous 
display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's 
materials, like the rude simplicity of the age 
in which he lived. His poetry resembles the 
root just springing from the ground rather 
than the full-blown flower. His muse is no 
Ci babbling gossip of the air," fluent and re- 
dundant ; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb 



OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 45 

person, that has just found the use of speech, 
crowds many things together with eager haste, 
with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions, to 
prevent mistake. His words point as an 
index to the objects, like the eye or finger. 
There were none of the common-places of 
poetic diction in our authors time, no reflect- 
ed lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints ; 
he was obliged to inspect things for himself, 
to look narrowly, and almost to handle the 
object, as in the obscurity of morning we 
partly see and partly grope our way ; so 
that his descriptions have a sort of tangible 
character belonging to them, and produce 
the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer 
had an equal eye for truth of nature and dis- 
crimination of character ; and his interest in 
what he saw gave new distinctness and force 
to his power of observation. The picturesque 
and the dramatic are in him closely blended 
together, and hardly distinguishable ; for he 
principally describes external appearances as 
indicating character, as symbols of internal 
sentiment. There is a meaning in what he 
sees ; and it is this which catches his eye by 
sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of 
the Canterbury Pilgrims — of the Knight — the 
Squire — the Oxford Scholar — the Gap-toothed 
Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for them- 



46 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

selves. To take one or two of these at ran- 
dom : 

" There was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, 

That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy •, 

Hire gretest othe n'as but by seint Eloy : 

And she was cleped Madame Eglentine. 

Ful wel she sange the service divine 

Entuned in hire npse ful swetely ; 

And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, 

After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 

For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. 

At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle ; 

She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, 

Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. 
****** * 

And sikerly she was of great disport, 
And ful pleasant, and amiable of port, 
And peined hire to contrefeten chere 
Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, 
And to ben holden digne of reverence. 

But for to speken of hire conscience, 
She was so charitable and so pitous, 
She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous 
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde, 
Of smaie houndes hadde she, that she fedde 
With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede, 
But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, 
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert : 
And all was conscience and tendre herte. 

Full semely hire wimple ypinched was ; 

Hire nose tretis ; hire eyen grey as glas ; 

Hire mouth ful smale : and therto soft and red ; 

But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed. 

It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe." 
*** * * * * * * 

"A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, 

An out-rider, that loved venerie : 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 47 

A manly man, to ben an Abbot able. 

Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable : 

And whan he rode, men mighte his bridel here, 

Gingeling in a whistling wind as clere, 

And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle, 

Ther as this lord was keper of the celle. 

The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, 
Because that it was olde and somdele streit, 
This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace, 
And held after the newe world the trace. 
He yave not of the text a pulled hen, 
That saith, that hunters ben not holy men ;— 
Therefore he was a prickasoure a right : 
Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight : 
Of pricking and of hunting for the hare 
"Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare. 

I saw his sieves purfiled at the hond 
"With gris, and that the finest of the lond. 
And for to fasten his hood under his chinne, 
He had of gold y wrought a curious pinne : 
A love-knotte in the greter end ther was. 
His hed was balled, and shone as any glas, 
And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint. 
He was a lord ful fat and in good point. 
His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed, 
That stemed as a forneis of a led. 
His botes souple, his hors in gret estat, 
Now certainly he was a fayre prelat. 
He was not pale as a forpined gost. 
A fat swan loved he best of any rost. 
His palfrey was as browne as is a berry.'' 

The Serjeant at law is the same identical 
individual as Lawyer Dowling in Tom Jones, 
who wished to divide himself into a hundred 
pieces, to be in a hundred places at once. 



48 OX CHAUCER AXD SPENSER. 

" No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as, 
And yet he semed besier than he was." 

The Frankelein, in u whose hous it snevved of 
mete and drinke;'' the Shipman, " who rode 
upon a rouncie, as he couthe ;*' the Doctour 
of Phisike, " whose studie was but litel of the 
Bible;" the Wif of Bath, in 

" All whose parish ther was non, 
That to the offring before hire shulde gon, 
And if ther did, certain so wroth was she, 
That she was out of alle charitee ;" 

— the poure Persone of a toun, u whose pa- 
rish was wide, and houses fer asonder;" the 
Miller, and the reve, "a slendre colerike man/ ; 
are all of the same stamp. They are every 
one samples of a kind; abstract definitions of 
a species. Chaucer, it has been said, num- 
bered the classes of men, as Linnaeus num- 
bered the plants. Most of them remain to 
this day : others, that are obsolete, and may 
well be dispensed with, still live in his descrip- 
tions of them. Such is the Sompnoure : 

" A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place, 
That hadde a fire-red cherubinnes face, 
For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe, 
As hote he was, and likerous as a sparwe, 
With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd 
Of his visage children were sore aferd. 
Ther n'as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston, 
Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non, 
Ne oinement that wolde dense or bite, 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 49 

That him might helpen of his whelkes white, 
Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes. 
Wei loved he garlike, onions, and lekes, 
And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood. 
Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood. 
And whan that he well dronken had the win, 
Than wold he speken no word but Latin. 
A fewe termes coude he, two or three, 
That he had lerned out of som decree ; 
No wonder is, he heard it all the day. — 

In danger hadde he at his owen gise 
The yonge girles of the diocise, 
And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede. 
A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede 
As gret as it were for an alestake : 
A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake. 
With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere — ■ 
That hadde a vois as smale as hath a gote.'' 

It would be a curious speculation (at least 
for those who think that the characters of men 
never change, though manners, opinions, and 
institutions may,) to know what has become of 
this character of the Sompnoure in the pre- 
sent day ; whether or not it has any technical 
representative in existing professions ; into 
what channels and conduits it has withdrawn 
itself, w r here it lurks unseen in cunning ob- 
scurity, or else shews its face booldly, pam- 
pered into all the insolence of office, in some 
other shape, as it is deterred or encouraged by 
circumstances. Chaucer's characters mo- 
dernized, upon this principle of historic 

E 



50 ON CHAUCER AXD SPENSER. 

derivation, would be an useful addition to our 
knowledge of human nature. But who is 
there to undertake it ? 

The descriptions of the equipage and ac- 
coutrements of the two kings of Thrace and 
hide, in the Knight's Tale, are as striking 
and grand as the others are lively and natural : 

• 4 Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon 
Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace : 
Blake was his herd, and manly was his face, 
The cercles of his eyen in his hed 
They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red, 
And like a griffon loked he about, 
With kemped heres on his browes stout ; 
His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge, 
His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe. 
And, as the guise was in his contree, 
Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he, 
With foure white bolles in the trais. 
Instede of cote-armure on his harnais, 
With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold, 
He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old. 
His longe here was kempte behind his bak, 
As any ravenes fether it shone for blake. 
A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight, 
Upon his hed sate full of stones bright, 
Of fine rubins and of diamants. 
About his char ther wenten white alauns, 
Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere, 
To hunten at the leon or the dere, 
And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound. — 

With Arcite, in stories as men find, 
The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde, 
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele, 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 51 

Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele, 

Came riding like the god of armes, Mars. 

His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars, 

Couched with perles, white, and round and grete. 

His sadel was of brent gold new ybete ; 

A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging 

Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling. 

His crispe here like ringes was yronne, 

And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne. 

His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin, 

His lippes round, his colour was sanguin, 

A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint, 

Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint, 

And as a leon he his loking caste. 

Of five-and-twenty yere his age I caste. 

His berd was wel begonnen for to spring ; 

His vois was as a trompe thundering. 

Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene 

A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene. 

Upon his hond he bare, for his deduit, 

An egle tame, as any lily whit. — 

About this king ther ran on every part 

Ful many a tame leon and leopart." 

What a deal of terrible beauty there is con- 
tained in this description ! The imagination 
of a poet brings such objects before us as 
when we look at wild beasts in a menagerie ; 
their claws are pared, their eyes glitter like 
harmless lightning ; but we gaze at them with 
a pleasing awe, clothed in beauty, formidable 
in the sense of abstract power. 

Chaucer 5 s descriptions of natural scenery 
possess the same sort of characteristic excel- 

E 2 



52 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

lence, or what might be termed gusto. They 
have a local truth and freshness, which gives 
the very feeling of the air, the coolness or 
moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects 
are thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the 
interest of the story, and render back the sen- 
timent of the speakers mind. One of the 
finest parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. 
It is the beginning of the Flower and the Leaf, 
where he describes the delight of that young 
beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening 
in the morning of the year to the singing of 
the nightingale ; while her joy rises with the 
rising song, and gushes out afresh at every 
pause, and is borne along with the full tide of 
pleasure, and still increases, and repeats, and 
prolongs itself, and knows no ebb. The cool- 
ness of the arbour, its retirement, the early 
time of the day, the sudden starting up of the 
birds in the neighbouring bushes, the eager 
delight with which they devour and rend the 
opening buds and flowers, are expressed with 
a truth and feeling w 7 hich make the whole ap- 
pear like the recollection of an actual scene : 

" Which as me thought was right a pleasing sight, 
And eke the briddes song for to here, 
Would haue rejoyced any earthly wight, 
And I that couth not yet in no manere 
Heare the nightingale of all the yeare, 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 53 

Fill busily herkened with herte and with eare, 
If I her voice perceiue coud any where. 

And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie, 
Thought sodainly I felt so sweet an aire 
Of the eglentere, that certainely 
There is no herte I deme in such dispaire, 
Ne with thoughts froward and contraire, 
So ouerlaid, but it should soone haue bote, 
If it had ones felt this savour sote. 

And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, 

I was ware of the fairest medler tree 

That ever yet in all my life I sie 

As full of blossomes as it might be, 

Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile 

Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet 

Here and there of buds and floures sweet. 

And to the herber side was joyning 
This faire tree, of which I haue you told, 
And at the last the brid began to sing, 
Whan he had eaten what he eat wold, 
So passing sweetly, that by manifold 
It was more pleasaunt than I coud deuise 
And whan his song was ended in this wise, 

The nightingale with so merry a note 

Answered him that all the wood rong 

So sodainly, that as it were a sote, 

I stood astonied, so was I with the song 

Thorow rauished, that til late and long, 

I ne wist in what place I was, ne where, 

And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere. 

Wherefore I waited about busily 
On euery side, if I her might see, 
And at the last I gan full well aspie 



n4 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, 
On the further side euen right by me, 
That gaue so passing a delicious smell, 
According to the eglentere full well, 

Whereof I had so inly great pleasure, 
That as me thought I surely rauished was 
Into Paradice, where my desire 
Was for to be, and no ferther passe 
As for that day, and on the sote grasse 
I sat me downe, for as for mine entent, 
The birds' song was more conuenient, 

And more pleasaunt to me, by manifold, 
Than meat or drinke, or any other thing, 
Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, 
The wholesome sauours eke so comforting, 
That, as I demed, sith the beginning 
Of the world was neuer seene or than 
So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man. 

And as I sat the birds harkening thus, 
Me thought that I heard voices sodainly 
The most sweetest and most delicious 
That euer any wight I trow truly 
Heard in their life, for the armony 
And sweet accorde was in so good musike, 
That the uoice to angels was most like." 

There is here no affected rapture, no flowery 
sentiment : the whole is an ebullition of natural 
delight " welling out of the heart/ 5 like water 
from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of 
art : there is a strength as well as a simplicity 
in the imagination, that reposes entirely on 
nature, that nothing else can supply. It was 



OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 55 

the same trust in nature, and reliance on his 
subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe 
the grief and patience of Griselda ; the faith 
of Constance ; and the heroic perseverance of 
the little child, who, going to school through 
the streets of Jewry, 

" Oh Alma Redemptoris mater, loudly sung," 

and who after his death still triumphed in his 
song. Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, 
sustained sentiment, than any other writer, 
except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, 
and intensity of conception, never swerving 
from his subject, I think no other writer comes 
near him, not even the Greek tragedians, I 
wish to be allowed to give one or two instances 
of what I mean. I will take the following 
from the Knight's Tale. The distress of Arcite, 
in consequence of his banishment from his 
love, is thus described : 

" Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was, 
Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas, 
For sene his lady shall he never mo. 
And shortly to concluden all his wo, 
So mochel sorwe hadde never creature, 
That is or shall be, while the world may dure. 
His slepe, his mete, his drinke is him byraft. 
That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft 
His even holwe, and grisly to behold, 
His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold, 
And solitary he was, and ever alone, 



56 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

And wailing all the night, making his mone. 

And if he herde song or instrument, 

Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent. 

So feble were his spirites, and so low, 

And changed so that no man coude know 

His speche, ne his vois, though men it herd." 

This picture of the sinking of the heart, of 
the wasting away of the body and mind, of 
the gradual failure of all the faculties under 
the contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be 
surpassed. Of the same kind is his farewell 
to his mistress, after he has gained her hand 
and lost his life in the combat : 

" Alas the wo ! alas the peines stronge, 
That I for you have suffered, and so longe ! 
Alas the deth ! alas min Emilie ! 
Alas departing of our compagnie ; 
Alas min hertes quene ! alas my wif ! 
Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif ! 
What is this world ? what axen men to have ? 
Now with his love, now in his colde grave 
Alone withouten any compagnie." 

The death of Arcite is the more affecting 
as it comes after triumph and victory, after 
the pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of 
prayer, the celebration of the gorgeous rites 
of chivalry. The descriptions of the three 
temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of 
the ornaments and ceremonies used in each, 
with the reception given to the offerings of 
the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 5? 

of which is lost in Dryden's version. For 
instance, such lines as the following are not 
rendered with their true feeling : 

" Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all 
The purtreiture that was upon the wall 
Within the temple of mighty Mars the rede — 
That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace 
In thilke colde and frosty region, 
Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion. 
First on the wall was peinted a forest, 
In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best, 
With knotty knarry Darrein trees old 
Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold ; 
In which ther ran a romble and a swough, 
As though a storm shuld bresten every bough." 

And again, among innumerable terrific images 
of death and slaughter painted on the wall, is 
this one : 

" The statue of Mars upon a carte stood 
Armed, and looked grim as he were wood. 
A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete 
With eyen red, and of a man he ete." 

The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio; but 
the Clerk of Oxenforde, who tells it, professes 
to have learned it from Petrarch. This story 
has gone all over Europe, and has passed into 
a proverb. In spite of the barbarity of the 
circumstances, which are abominable, the 
sentiment remains unimpaired and unalterable. 
It is of that kind " that heaves no sigh, that 



58 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

sheds no tear ;" but it hangs upon the beatings 
of the heart ; it is a part of the very being ; 
it is as inseparable from it as the breath we 
draw. It is still and calm as the face of death. 
Nothing can touch it in its etherial purity : 
tender as the yielding flower, it is fixed as the 
marble firmament. The only remonstrance 
she makes, the only complaint she utters 
against all the ill-treatment she receives, is 
that single line where, when turned back 
naked to her father's house, she says, 

" Let me not like a worm go by the way." 

The first outline given of the character is 
inimitable; 

" Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable, 
Wher as this markis shope his marriage, 
Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable, 
In which that poure folk of that village 
Hadden hir bestes and her herbergage, 
And of hir labour toke hir sustenance, 
After that the erthe yave hem habun dance. 

Among this poure. folk ther dwelt a man, 
Which that was holden pourest of hem all : 
But highe God sometime senden can 
His grace unto a litel oxes stall : 
Janicola men of that thorpe him call. 
A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight, 
And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight. 

But for to speke of virtuous beautee, 
Than was she on the fairest under Sonne : 



OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 59 

Ful pourely yibstred up was she : 
No likerous lust was in hire herte yronne ; 
Ful ofter of the well than of the tonne 
She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese, 
She knew wel labour, but non idel ese. 

But though this mayden tendre were of age, 

Yet in the brest of hire virginitee 

Ther was enclosed sad and ripe corage : 

And in gret reverence and charitee 

Hire olde poure fader fostred she : 

A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept, 

She wolde not ben idel til she slept. 

And whan she horn ward came she wolde bring 

Wortes and other herbes times oft, 

The which she shred and sethe for hire living, 

And made hire bed ful hard, and nothing soft * 

And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft 

"With every obeisance and diligence, 

That child may don to fadres reverence. 

Upon Grisilde, this poure creature, 
Ful often sithe this markis sette his eye, 
As he on hunting rode pera venture : 
And whan it fell that he might hire espie. 
He not with wonton loking of folie 
His eyen cast on hire, but in sad wise 
Upon hire chere he wold him oft avise. 

Commending in his herte hire womanhede, 
And eke hire vertue, passing any wight 
Of so yong age, as wel in chere as dede. 
For though the people have no gret insight 
In vertue, he considered ful right 
Hire bountee, and disposed that he wold 
Wedde hire only, if ever he wedden shold. 



60 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Grisilde of this (God wot,) ful innocent, 
That for hire shapen was all this array, 
To fetch en water at a welle is went, 
And cometh home as sone as ever she may. 
For wel she had heard say that thilke day 
The markis shulde wedde, and, if she might, 
She wolde fayn han seen som of that sight. 

She thought, "I wol with other maidens stond, 

That ben my felawes, in our dore, and see 

The markisesse, and thereto wol I fond 

To don at home, as sone as it may be, 

The labour which longeth unto me, 

And than I may at leiser hire behold, 

If she this way unto the castel hold." 

And she wolde over the threswold gon 
The markis came and gan hire for to call, 
And she set doun her water-pot anon 
Beside the threswold in an oxes stall, 
And doun upon hire knees she gan to fall. 
And with sad countenance kneleth still, 
Till she had heard what was the lordes will." 

The story of the little child slain in Jewry, 
(which is told by the Prioress, and worthy to 
be told by her who was " all conscience and 
tender heart,") is not less touching than that 
of Griselda. It is simple and heroic to the 
last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a 
religious sanctity about it, connected with the 
manners and superstitions of the age. It has 
all the spirit of martyrdom. 

It has also all the extravagance and the utmost 
licentiousness of comic humour, equally arising 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 61 

out of the manners of the time. In this too 
Chaucer resembled Boccaccio, that he excelled 
in both styles, and could pass at will, " from 
grave to gay, from lively to severe ;" but he 
never confounded the two styles together (ex- 
cept from that involuntary and unconscious 
mixture of the pathetic and humorous which 
is almost always to be found in nature,) and 
was exclusively taken up with what he set 
about, whether it was jest or earnest. The 
Wife of Bath's Prologue (which Pope has 
very admirably modernised) is, perhaps, une- 
qualled as a comic story. The Cock and the 
Fox is also excellent for lively strokes of cha- 
racter and satire. January and May is not so 
good as some of the others. Chaucer's versifi- 
cation, considering the time at which he wrote, 
and that versification is a thing in a great de- 
gree mechanical, is not one of his least merits* 
It has considerable strength and harmony, and 
its apparent deficiency in the latter respect 
arises chiefly from the alterations which have 
since taken place in the pronunciation or mode 
of accenting the words of the language. The 
best general rule for reading him is to pro- 
nounce the final e, as in reading Italian. 

It was observed in the last Lecture that 
painting describes what the object is in itself, 
poetry what it implies or suggests. Chaucer's 



62 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

poetry is not, in general, the best confirmation 
of the truth of this distinction, for his poetry 
is more picturesque and historical than almost 
any other. But there is one instance in point 
which I cannot help giving in this place. It 
is the story of the three thieves who go in 
search of Death to kill him, and who, meeting 
with him, are entangled in their fate by his 
words, without knowing him. In the printed 
catalogue to Mr. West's (in some respects very- 
admirable) picture of Death on the Pale Horse, 
it is observed that, " In poetry the same effect 
is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams 
of description, touching, as it were with fire, 
the features and edges of a general mass of 
awful obscurity ; but in painting, such indis- 
tinctness would be a defect, and imply that the 
artist wanted the power to pourtray the con- 
ceptions of his fancy. Mr. West was of opi- 
nion that to delineate a physical form, which 
in its moral impression would approximate to 
that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was 
necessary to endow it, if possible, with the ap- 
pearance of super-human strength and energy. 
He has therefore exerted the utmost force and 
perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure." 
— One might suppose from this, that the way 
to represent a shadow was to make it as sub- 
stantial as possible. Oh, no ! Painting has its 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 63 

prerogatives (and high ones they are), but they 

lie in representing the visible, not the invisible. 
The moral attributes of Death are powers and 
effects of an infinitely wide and general descrip- 
tion, which no individual or physical form can 
possibly represent but by a courtesy of speech. 
or bv a distant analogy. The moral impression 
of Death is essentially visionary ; its reality is 
in the mind's eye. Words are here the only 
things; and things, physical forms, the mere 
mockeries of the understanding. The less 
definite, the less bodily the conception, the 
more vast, unformed, and unsubstantial, the 
nearer does it approach to some resemblance 
of that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresist- 
ible principle, which every where, and at some 
time or other, exerts its power over all things. 
Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or 
Space, or Time. He is an ugly customer, 
who will not be invited to supper, or to sit 
for his picture. He is with us and about us, 
but we do not see him. He stalks on before 
us ; and we do not mind him : he follows us 
close behind, and we do not turn to look back 
at him. We do not see him making faces at 
us in our life-time, nor perceive him afterwards 
sitting in mock - majesty, a twin - skeleton, 
beside us, tickling our bare ribs, and staring 
into our hollow eve-balls ! Chaucer knew this, 



64 OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

He makes three riotous companions go in 
search of Death to kill him, they meet with an 
old man whom they reproach with his age, 
and ask why he does not die, to which he an- 
swers thus : 

" Ne Deth, alas ! ne will not han my lif. 
Thus walke I like a restless caitiff, 
And on the ground, which is my modres gate, 
I knocke with my staf, erlich and late, 
And say to hire, ' Leve mother, let me in. 
Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin, 
Alas ! when shall my bones ben at reste ? 
Mother, with you wolde I changen my cheste, 
That in my chambre longe time hath be, 
Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me.' 
But yet to me she will not don that grace. 
For which ful pale and welked is my face." 

They then ask the old man where they shall 
find out death to kill him, and he sends them 
on an errand which ends in the death of all 
three. We hear no more of him, but it is 
Death that they have encountered. 

The interval between Chaucer and Spenser 
is long and dreary. There is nothing to fill 
up the chasm but the names of Occleve, " an- 
cient Gower/' Lydgate, Wyatt, Surry, and 
Sackville. Spenser flourished in the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John 
Davies into Ireland, of which he has left behind 
him some tender recollections in his descrip- 
tion of the bog of Allan, and a record in an 



OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 65 

ably written paper, containing observations on 
the state of that country and the means of im- 
proving it, which remain in full force to the 
present day. Spenser died at an obscure inn 
in London, it is supposed in distressed circum- 
stances. The treatment he received from 
Burleigh is well known. Spenser, as well as 
Chaucer, was engaged in active life; but the 
genius of his poetry was not active : it is in- 
spired by the love of ease, and relaxation from 
ail the cares and business of life. Of all the 
poets, he is the most poetical. Though 
much later than Chaucer, his obligations to 
preceding writers were less. He has in some 
measure borrowed the plan of his poem (as a 
number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto ; 
but he has engrafted upon it an exuberance or 
fancy, and an endless voluptuousness of senti- 
ment, which are not to be found in the Italian 
writer. Farther, Spenser is even more of an 
inventor in the subject-matter. There is an 
originality, richness, and variety in his allego- 
rical personages and fictions, which almost vies 
with the splendour of the ancient mythology. 
If Ariosto transports us into the regions of 
romance, Spenser's poetry is ail fairy-land. In 
Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in com- 
pany, gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. 
In Spenser, we wander in another world, 

F 



66 ON CUAUCER AND SPENSER. 

among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays 
us in the lap of a lovelier nature, by the sound 
of softer streams, among greener hills and 
fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we 
find it, but as we expected to find it ; and ful- 
fils the delightful promise of our youth. He 
waves his wand of enchantment — and at once 
embodies airy beings, and throws a delicious 
veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of 
reality and of fiction are poised on the wings 
of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem 
more distinct than his perceptions. He is the 
painter of abstractions, and describes them 
with dazzling minuteness. In the mask of 
Cupid he makes the god of love " clap on 
high his coloured winges twain :" and it is 
said of Gluttony, in the Procession of the 
Passions, 

" In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad." 

At times he becomes picturesque from his 
intense love of beauty ; as where he compares 
Prince Arthur's crest to the appearance of 
the almond tree : 

" Upon the top of all his lofty crest, 

A bunch of hairs discolour'd diversely 

With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest, 
Did shake and seem'd to daunce for jollity ; 

Like to an almond tree ymounted high 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 67 

On top of green Selenis all alone, 
"With blossoms brave bedecked daintily ; 
Her tender locks do tremble every one 
At every little breath that under heav'n is blown. v 

The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, 
is the moving principle of his mind ; and he is 
guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule 
but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagi- 
nation. He luxuriates equally in scenes of 
Eastern magnificence, or the still solitude 
of a hermit's cell — in the extremes of sen- 
suality, or refinement. 

In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little 
withered old man by a wood-side opening 
a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far be- 
hind, a damsel in a boat upon an enchanted 
lake, wood -nymphs, and satyrs; and all of a 
sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, 
with tapers burning, amidst knights and ladies, 
with dance and revelry, and song, " and mask, 
and antique pageantry." What can be more 
solitary, more shut up in itself, than his des- 
cription of the house of Sleep, to which 
Archimago sends for a dream : 

" And, more to lull him in his slumber soft, 

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down, 
And ever- drizzling rain upon the loft, 

Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swound, 

F <2 



68 OX CHAUCER AXD spkxskr. 

No other noise, nor people's troublous cries, 
That still are wont t' annoy the walled town, 
Might there be heard ; but careless quiet lies 
Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies." 

It is as if " the honey-heavy dew of slumber" 
had settled on his pen in writing these lines. 
How different in the subject (and yet how 
like in beauty) is the following description of 
the Bower of Bliss : 

" Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound 

Of all that mote delight a dainty ear ; 
Such as at once might not on living ground, 

Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere : 
Hight hard it was for wight which did it hear 

To tell what manner musicke that mote be ; 
For all that pleasing is to living eare 

Was there consorted in one harmonie ; 
Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree. 

The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade 

Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet : 
The angelical soft trembling voices made 

To th' instruments divine respondence meet. 
The silver sounding instruments did meet 

With the base murmur of the water's fall ; 
The water's fall with difference discreet, 

Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; 
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all." 

The remainder of the passage has all that 
voluptuous pathos, and languid brilliancy of 
fancy, in which this writer excelled : 

" The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay ; 
Ah ! see, whoso fay re thing dost fain f o see, 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 69 

In springing flower the image of thy day i 
Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly she 

Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty, 
That fairer seems the less ye see her may ! 

Lo ! see soon after how more bold and free 
Her bared bosom she doth broad display ; 
Lo ! see soon after, how she fades and falls away ! 

So passeth in the passing of a day 

Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower ; 
Ne more doth flourish after first decay, 

That erst was sought, to deck both bed and bower 
Of many a lady and many a paramour ! 

Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime, 
For soon comes age that will her pride deflower ; 

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time, 
Whilst loving thou mayest loved be with equal crime.* 

He ceased ; and then gan all the quire of birds 

Their divers notes to attune unto his lay, 
As in approvance of his pleasing wordes. 

The constant pair heard all that he did say, 
Yet swerved not, but kept their forward way 

Through many covert groves and thickets close, 
In which they creeping did at last display f 

That wanton lady with her lover loose, 
Whose sleepy head she in her lap did soft dispose. 

Upon a bed of roses she was laid, 

As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin ; 
And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, 

All in a veil of silk and silver thin, 
That hid no whit her alabaster skin, 

But rather shewed more white, if more might be : 
More subtle web Arachne cannot spin ; 

* Taken from Tasso. 

f This word is an instance of those unwarrantable free- 
doms which Spenser sometimes took with language. 



70 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see 
Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee. 

Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil 

Of hungry eyes which n' ote therewith be fill'd, 
And yet through languor of her late sweet toil 

Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill'd, 
That like pure Orient perles adown it trill'd ; 

And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight 
Moisten' d their fiery beams, with which she thrill' d 

Frail hearts, yet quenched not ; like starry light, 
Which, sparkling on the silent waves, does seem more 
bright." 

The finest things in Spenser are, the cha- 
racter of Una, in the first book ; the House 
of Pride ; the Cave of Mammon, and the Cave 
of Despair ; the account of Memory, of whom 
it is said, among other things, 

" The wars he well remember'd of King Nine, 
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine ;" 

the description of Belphcebe ; the story of 
Florimel and the Witch's son ; the Gardens 
of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss ; the Mask 
of Cupid ; and Colin Clout's vision, in the 
last book. But some people will say that all 
this may be very fine, but that they cannot 
understand it on account of the allegory. They 
are afraid of the allegory as if they thought it 
w r ould bite them : they look at it as a child 
looks at a painted dragon, and think it will 
strangle them in its shining folds. This is 



OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 7^ 

very idle. If they do not meddle with the 
allegory, the allegory will not meddle with 
them. Without minding it at all, the whole 
is as plain as a pike -staff. It might as well 
be pretended that we cannot see Poussin's 
pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory 
prevents us from understanding Spenser. For 
instance, when Britomart, seated amidst the 
young warriors, lets fall her hair and discovers 
her sex, is it necessary to know the part she 
plays in the allegory, to understand the beauty 
of the following stanza ? 

" And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest 

Was for like need enforced to disarray, 
Tho' when as vailed was her lofty crest, 

Her golden locks that were in trammels gay 
Upbounden, did themselves ad own display, 

And raught unto her heels like sunny beams 
That in a cloud their light did long time stay ; 

Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams, 
And through the persant air shoot forth their azure 
streams." 

Or is there any mystery in what is said of 
Belphcebe, that her hair was sprinkled with 
flowers and blossoms which had been en- 
tangled in it as she fled through the woods ? 
Or is it necessary to have a more distinct idea 
of Proteus than that which is given of him 
in his boat, with the frighted Florimel at his 
feet, while 



7*2 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

<c the cold icicles from his rough beard 



Dropped adown upon her snowy breast !" 

Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the 
sea-gods, that pass by them, to say — 

" That was Arion crowned : — 
So went he playing on the watery plain." 

Or to take the Procession of the Passions 
that draw the coach of Pride, in which the 
figures of Idleness, of Gluttony, of Lechery, 
of Avarice, of Envy, and of Wrath speak, 
one should think, plain enough for themselves ; 
such as this of Gluttony : 

M And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony, 
Deformed creature, on a filthy swine ; 
His belly was up blown with luxury ; 

And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne ; 
And like a crane his neck was long and fine, 
With which he swallowed up excessive feast, 
For want whereof poor people oft did pine. 

In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad : 

For other clothes he could not wear for heat ; 
And on his head an ivy garland had, 

From under which fast trickled down the sweat : 
Still, as he rode, he somewhat still did eat. 

And in his hand did bear a bouzing can, 
Of which he supt so oft that on his seat 

His drunken corse he scarce upholden can ; 
In shape and size more like a monster than a man." 

Or this of Lechery : 

81 And next to him rode lustfull Lechery 

Upon a bearded goat, whose rugged hair 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 73 

And whaly eyes (the sign of jealousy) 

Was like the person's self whom he did bear : 

Who rough and black and filthy did appear. 
Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye : 

Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear, 

When fairer faces were bid standen by : 
! who does know the bent of woman's fantasy ? 

In a green gown he clothed was full fair, 

Which underneath did hide his filthiness ; 
And in his hand a burning heart he bare, 

Full of vain follies and new fangleness ; 
For he was false and fraught with fickleness; 

And learned had to love with secret looks ; 
And well could dance ; and sing with ruefulness ; 

And fortunes tell ; and read in loving books ; 
And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks. 

Inconstant man that loved all he saw, 

And lusted after all that he did love ; 
Ne would his looser life be tied to law ; 

But joyed weak women's hearts to tempt and prove, 
If from their loyal loves he might them move." 

This is pretty plain - spoken. Mr. Southey 
says, of Spenser, 

■ — -" Yet not more sweet 



Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise ; 
High priest of all the Muses' mysteries !" 

On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry 
into mysteries which do not strictly belong to 
the Muses. 

Of the same kind with the Procession of 
the Passions, as little obscure, and still more 



74 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

beautiful, is the Mask of Cupid, with his train 
of votaries : 

" The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy 

Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer ; 

His garment neither was of silk nor say, 

But painted plumes in goodly order dight, 
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array 

Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight .' 
As those same plumes so seem'd he vain and light, 

That by his gait might easily appear ; 
For still he far'd as dancing in delight, 

And in his hand a windy fan did bear 
That in the idle air he mov'd still here and there. 

And him beside march'd amorous Desire, 

Who seem'd of riper years than the other swain, 
Yet was that other swain this elder's sire, 

And gave him being, common to them twain : 
His garment was disguised very vain, 

And his embroidered bonnet sat awry ; 
'Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain, 

Which still he blew, and kindled busily, 
That soon they life conceiv'd and forth in flames did fly. 

Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad 

In a discolour' d coat of strange disguise, 
That at his back a broad capuccio had, 

And sleeves dependant Albanese-wise ; 
He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes, 

And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way, 
Or that the floor to shrink he did avise ; 

And on a broken reed he still did stay 
His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay. 

With him went Daunger, cloth'd in ragged weed, 
Made of bear's skin, that him more dreadfal made ; 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 7& 

Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need 
Strange horror to deform his grisly shade ; 

A net in th 5 one hand, and a rusty blade 

In th' other was ; this Mischiefe, that Mishap ; 

With th' one his foes he threat'ned to invade, 
With th' other he his (friends meant to enwrap ; 
For whom he could not kill he practiz'd to entrap. 

Next him was Fear, all arm'd from top to toe, 

Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby, 
But fear'd each shadow moving to and fro ; 

And his own arms when glittering he did spy 
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly, 

As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel'd ; 
And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye, 

'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield, 
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield. 

With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid, 

Of chearfull look and lovely to behold ; 
In silken samite she was light array'd, 

And her fair locks were woven up in gold ; 
She always smil'd, and in her hand did hold 

An holy-water sprinkled dipt in dew, 
With which she sprinkled favours manifold 

On whom she list, and did great liking shew, 
Great liking unto many, but true love to few. 

Next after them, the winged God himself 

Came riding on a lion ravenous, 
Taught to obey the menage of that elfe 

That man and beast with power imperious 
Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous : 

His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind; 
That his proud spoil of that same dolorous 

Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind ; 
Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind. 



7t) ON CFIAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Of which full proud, himself uprearing high, 

He looked round about with stern disdain, 
And did survey his goodly company : 

And, marshalling the evil-ordered train, 
With that the darts which his right hand did strain, 

Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake, 
And clapt on high his colour' d winges twain, 

That all his many it afraid did make : 
Tho' blinding him again, his way he forth did take." 

The description of Hope, in this series of 
historical portraits, is one of the most beautiful 
in Spenser : and the triumph of Cupid, at 
the mischief he has made, is worthy of the 
malicious urchin deity. In reading these 
descriptions, one can hardly avoid being re- 
minded of Rubens' s allegorical pictures ; but 
the account of Satyrane's taming the lion's 
whelps and lugging the beards cubs along in 
his arms while yet an infant, whom his 
mother so naturally advises to u go seek some 
other play-fellows/' has even more of this high 
picturesque character. Nobody but Rubens 
could have painted the fancy of Spenser ; and 
he could not have given the sentiment, the 
airy dream that hovers over it ! 

With all this, Spenser neither makes us 
laugh nor weep. The only jest in his poem 
is an allegorical play upon words, where he 
describes Malbecco as escaping in the herd of 
goats, " by the help of his fayre horns on 
night/' But he has been unjustly charged 



ON CHAUCER AXD SPEXSER. JJ 

with a want of passion and of strength. He 
has both in an immense degree. He has not 
indeed the pathos of immediate action or suf- 
fering, which is more properly the dramatic ; 
but he has all the pathos of sentiment and ro- 
mance — all that belongs to distant objects of 
terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His 
strength, in like manner, is not strength 
of will or action, of bone and muscle, nor 
is it coarse and palpable — but it assumes 
a character of vastness and sublimity seen 
through the same visionary medium, and 
blended with the appalling associations of 
preternatural agency. We need only turn, in 
proof of this, to the Cave of Despair, or the 
Cave of Mammon, or to the account of the 
change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The 
following stanzas, in the description of the 
Cave of Mammon, the grisly house of Plutus 
are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of 
the forms, the splendid chiaro-scuro^ and 
shadowy horror. 

" That house's form within was rude and strong, 
Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, 
From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung, 

Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift, 
And with rich metal loaded every rift, 

That heavy ruin they did seem to threat : 
And over them Arachne high did lift 

Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net. 
Enwrapped in foul smoke ? and clouds more black than jet. 



78 ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold, 

But overgrown with dust and old decay,* 
And hid in darkness that none could behold 

The hue thereof : for view of cheerful day 
Did never in that house itself display, 

But a faint shadow of uncertain light ; 
Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away ; 

Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night 
Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright. 

* * * * * * * 

And over all sad Horror with grim hue 

Did always soar, beating his iron wings ; 
And after him owls and night-ravens flew, 

The hateful messengers of heavy things, 
Of death and dolour telling sad tidings ; 

Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift, 
A song of bitter bale and sorrow sings, 

That heart of flint asunder could have rift ; 
Which having ended, after him she flieth swift," 

The Cave of Despair is described with equal 
gloominess and power of fancy ; and the fine 
moral declamation of the owner of it, on the 
evils of life, almost makes one in love with 
death. In the story of Malbecco, who is 
hunted by jealousy, and in vain strives to run 
away from his own thoughts — - 



* " That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, 
Tho* they are made and moulded of things past, 
And give to Dust that is a little gilt, 
More laud than gold o'er-dusted." 

Troilus and Cressida. 



ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 79 

w High over hill and over dale he flies " — 

the truth of human passion and the preterna- 
tural ending are equally striking. — It is not 
fair to compare Spenser with Shakspeare, in 
point of interest. A fairer comparison would 
be with Com us ; and the result would not be 
unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one 
work of the same allegorical kind, which has 
more interest than Spenser (with scarcely less 
imagination) : and that is the Pilgrims's 
Progress. The three first books of the Faery 
Queen are very superior to the three last. One 
would think that Pope, who used to ask- if 
any one had ever read the Faery Queen 
through, had only dipped into these last. The 
only things in them equal to the former are 
the account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the 
delightful episode of Pastorella. 

The language of Spenser is full, and co- 
pious, to overflowing : it is less pure and 
idiomatic than Chaucer's^ and is enriched and 
adorned with phrases borrowed from the dif- 
ferent languages of Europe, both ancient and 
modern. He was, probably, seduced into a 
certain license of expression by the difficulty 
of filling up the moulds of his complicated 
rhymed stanza from the limited resources of 
his native language. This stanza, with al- 
ternate and repeatedly recurring rhymes, is 



SO ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 

borrowed from the Italians. It was peculiarly 
fitted to their language, which abounds in 
similar vowel terminations, and is as little 
adapted to ours, from the stubborn, unaccom- 
modating resistance which the consonant end- 
ings of the northern languages make to this 
sort of endless sing-song. — Not that I would 
on that account part with the stanza of Spen- 
ser. We are, perhaps, indebted to this very 
necessity of finding out new forms of expres- 
sion, and to the occasional faults to which it 
led, for a poetical language, rich and varied 
and magnificent beyond all former, and almost 
all later, example. His versification is, at once, 
the most smooth and the most sounding in 
the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, 
u in many a winding bout of linked sweetness 
long drawn out," — that would cloy by their 
very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly 
relieved and enchanted by their continued vari- 
ety of modulation — dwelling on the pauses of 
the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide of har- 
mony with the movement of the sentiment. 
It has not the bold dramatic transitions of 
Shakspeare's blank verse, nor the high -raised 
tone of Milton's ; but it is the perfection of 
melting harmony, dissolving the soul in plea- 
sure, or holding it captive in the chains of 
suspense, Spenser was the poet of our w r aking 



OX CHAUCER AND SPENSER. Si 

dreams ; and he has invented not only a lan- 
guage, but a music of his own for them. 
The undulations are infinite, like those of 
the waves of the sea : but the effect is still 
the same, lulling the senses into a deep ob- 
livion of the jarring noises of the world, 
from which we have no wish to be ever 
recalled. 



LECTURE in. 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

In looking back to the great works of genius 
in former times, we are sometimes disposed 
to wonder at the little progress which has 
since been made in poetry, and in the arts of 
imitation in general. But this is perhaps a 
foolish wonder. Nothing can be more con- 
trary to the fact, than the supposition that in 
what we understand by the fine arts, as paint- 
ing, and poetry, relative perfection is only the 
result of repeated efforts in successive periods, 
and that what has been once well done, con- 
stantly leads to something better. What is 
mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of 
demonstration, is progressive, and admits of 
gradual improvement : what is not mechanical, 
or definite, but depends on feeling, taste, and 
genius, very soon becomes stationary, or re- 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 83 

trograde, and loses more than it gains by 
transfusion. The contrary opinion is a vulgar 
error, which has grown up, like many others, 
from transferring an analogy of one kind to 
something quite distinct, without taking into 
the account the difference in the nature of the 
things, or attending to the difference of the 
results. For most persons, finding what won- 
derful advances have been made in biblical 
criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in geo- 
metry, astronomy, &c, i.e. in things depending 
on mere inquiry and experiment, or on abso- 
lute demonstration, have been led hastily to 
conclude that there was a general tendency 
in the efforts of the human intellect to im- 
prove by repetition, and, in all other arts and 
institutions, to grow perfect and mature by 
time. We look back upon the theological 
creed of our ancestors, and their discoveries 
in natural philosophy, with a smile of pity : 
science, and the arts connected with it, have 
all had their infancy, their youth, and man- 
hood, and seem to contain in them no prin- 
ciple of limitation or decay : and, enquiring 
no farther about the matter, we infer, in the 
intoxication of our pride, and the height of 
our self-congratulation, that the same progress 
has been made, and will continue to be made, 
in all other things which are the work of man, 

G £ 



84 ON SHAKSPEAHE AND MILTON. 

The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the 
face that one would think the smallest reflec- 
tion must suggest the truth, and overturn our 
sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the 
ablest orators, the best painters, and the finest 
sculptors that the world ever saw, appeared 
soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in 
a state of society which was, in other respects, 
comparatively barbarous. Those arts, which 
depend on individual genius and incommuni- 
cable power, have always leaped at once from 
infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn 
of invention to their meridian height and daz- 
zling lustre, and have in general declined ever 
after. This is the peculiar distinction and 
privilege of each, of science and of art : — of 
the one, never to attain its utmost limit of 
perfection ; and of the other, to arrive at it 
almost at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, 
Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto, (Milton alone 
was of a later age, and not the worse for it) 
— Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correg- 
gio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek 
sculptors and tragedians, — all lived near the 
beginning of their arts — perfected, and all 
but created, them. These giant-sons of genius 
stand indeed upon the earth, but they tower 
above their fellows ; and the long line of their 
successors, in different ages, does not inter- 



ON SHAKSPEARE AXD MILTON. 8D 

pose any object to obstruct their view, or lessen 
their brightness. In strength and stature they 
are unrivalled ; in grace and beauty they have 
not been surpassed. In after ages and more 
refined periods (as they are called), great men 
have arisen one by one, as it were by throes 
and at intervals ; though, in general, the best 
of these cultivated and artificial minds were of 
an inferior order ; as Tasso and Pope, among 
poets ; Guido and Vandyke, among painters. 
But in the earlier stages of the arts, as soon 
as the first mechanical difficulties had been 
got over, and the language was sufficiently 
acquired, they ros^ by clusters, and in con- 
stellations, never so to rise again ! 

The arts of painting and poetry are conver- 
sant with the world of thought within us, and 
with the world of sense around us — with what 
we know, and see, and feel intimately. They 
flow from the sacred shrine of our own breasts, 
and are kindled at the living lamp of nature. 
But the pulse of the passions assuredly beat 
as high, the depths and soundings of the 
human heart were as well understood, three 
thousand or three hundred years ago as they 
are at presenf : the face of nature and " the 
human face divine " shone as bright then as 
they have ever done. But it is their light, re- 
flected by true genius on art, that marks out 



86 ON SI1AKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

its path before it, and sheds a glory round the 
Muses* feet like that which 

" Circled Una's angel face, 
And made a sunshine in the shady place." 

The four greatest names in English poetry, 
are almost the four first we come to — Chau- 
cer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There 
are no others that can really be put in com- 
petition with these. The two last have had 
justice done them by the voice of common 
fame. Their names are blazoned in the very 
firmament of reputation ; while the two first, 
(though " the fault has been more in their stars 
than in themselves, that they are underlings ") 
either never emerged far above the horizon, 
or w ; ere too soon involved in the obscurity of 
time. The three first of these are excluded 
from Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets (Shak- 
speare indeed is so from the dramatic form of 
his compositions) : and the fourth, Milton, is 
admitted with a reluctant and churlish welcome. 

In comparing these four writers together, it 
might be said that Chaucer excels as the poet 
of manners, or of real life ; Spenser, as the poet 
of romance; Shakspeare, as the poet of nature 
(in the largest use of the term) ; and Milton, 
as the poet of morality. Chaucer most fre- 
quently describes things as they are ; Spenser, 
as we wish them to be ; Shakspeare, as they 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 8/ 

would be ; and Milton, as they ought to be. 
As poets, and as great poets, imagination, 
that is, the power of feigning things according 
to nature, was common to them all : but the 
principle or moving power, to which this 
faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was 
habit, or inveterate prejudice ; in Spenser, 
novelty, and the love of the marvellous ; in 
Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, com- 
bined with every variety of possible circum- 
stances; and in Milton, only with the highest. 
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity ; of 
Spenser, remoteness ; of Milton, elevation ; 
of Shakspeare, every thing. It has been said, 
by some critic, that Shakspeare was distin- 
guished from the other dramatic writers of his 
day only by his wit; that they had all his 
other qualities but that ; that one writer had 
as much sense, another as much fancy, another 
as much knowledge of character, another the 
same depth of passion, and another as great a 
power of language. This statement is not 
true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, 
even if it were. This person does not seem 
to have been aware that, upon his own show r - 
ing, the great distinction of Shakspeare's 
genius was its virtually including the genius 
of all the great men of his age, and not his 
differing from them in one accidental parti- 



88 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

cular. But to have done with such minute 
and literal trifling. 

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's 
mind was its generic quality, its power of 
communication with all other minds — so that 
it contained a universe of thought and feeling 
within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or 
exclusive excellence more than another. He 
was just like any other man, but that he was 
like all other men. He was the least of an 
egotist that it was possible to be. He was 
nothing in himself ; but he was all that others 
were, or that they could become. He not 
only had in himself the germs of every faculty 
and feeling, but he could follow them by 
anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceiv- 
able ramifications, through every change of 
fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of 
thought. He " had a mind reflecting ages 
past/ 5 and present : — all the people that ever 
lived are there. There was no respect of 
persons with him. His genius shone equally 
on the evil and on the good, on the wise and 
on the foolish, the monarch and the beggar : 
" All corners of the earth, kings, queens, 
and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of 
the grave," are hardly hid from his searching 
glance. He was like the genius of humanity, 
changing places with all of us at pleasure, and 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 89 

playing with our purposes as with his own. 
He turned the globe round for his amusement, 
and surveyed the generations of men, and the 
individuals as they passed, with their different 
concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, 
actions, and motives — as well those that they 
knew, as those which they did not know or 
acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of 
childhood, the ravings of despair, were the 
toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his 
call, and came at his bidding. Harmless 
fairies " nodded to him, and did him curtesies :" 
and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the 
command of et his so potent art." The world 
of spirits lay open to him 5 like the world of 
real men and women : and there is the same 
truth in his delineations of the one as of the 
other ; for if the preternatural characters he 
describes could be supposed to exist, they 
would speak, and feel and act^ as he makes 
them. He had only to think of any thing in 
order to become that thing, with all the 
circumstances belonging to it. When he 
conceived of a character, whether real of 
imaginary, he not only entered into all its 
thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, 
and as if by touching a secret spring, to be 
surrounded with all the same objects, " subject 
to the same skyey influences/' the same local, 



90 ON SIIAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

outward, and unforeseen accidents vvhich 
would occur in reality. Thus the character 
of Caliban not only stands before us with a 
language and manners of its own, but the 
scenery and situation of the enchanted island 
he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its 
strange noises, its hidden recesses, " his fre- 
quent haunts and ancient neighbourhood/' 
are given with a miraculous truth of nature, 
and with all the familiarity of an old recol- 
lection. The whole " coheres semblably 
together in time, place, and circumstance. 
In reading this author, you do not merely 
learn what his characters say, — you see their 
persons. By something expressed or under- 
stood, you are at no loss to decypher theii 
peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, 
the grouping, the bye- play, as we might see 
it on the stage. A word, an epithet paints a 
whole scene, or throws us back whole years in 
the history of the person represented. So (as 
it has been ingeniously remarked) when Pros- 
pero describes himself as left alone in the boat 
with his daughter, the epithet which he ap- 
plies to her, " Me and thy crying self," flings 
the imagination instantly back from the grown 
woman to the helpless condition of infancy, 
and places the first and most trying scene of 
his misfortunes before us, with all that he 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 91 

must have suffered in the interval. How 
well the silent anguish of Macduff is con- 
veyed to the reader, by the friendly expostu- 
lation of Malcolm — u What ! man, ne'er pull 
your hat upon your brows !* Again, Hamlet, 
in the scene with Rosencrantz and Guilden- 
stern, somewhat abruptly concludes his fine 
soliloquy on life by saying, " Man delights 
not me, nor woman neither,— though by your 
smiles you seem to say so." Which is ex- 
plained by their answer—" My lord, we had 
no such stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled 
to think, if you delight not in man, what len- 
ten entertainment the players shall receive 
from you whom we met on the way :" — as if 
while Hamlet was making this speech, his two 
old schoolfellows from Wittenburg had been 
really standing by, and he had seen them 
smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players 
crossing their minds. It is not ts a combina- 
tion and a form*' of words, a set speech or 
two, a preconcerted theory of a character, 
that will do this : but all the persons concerned 
must have been present in the poet^s imagina- 
tion, as at a kind of rehearsal ; and whatever 
would have passed through their minds on 
the occasion, and have been observed by 
others, passed through his, and is made 
known to the reader.-— I may add in passing, 



92 ON SIIAKSPEARK AND MILTON. 

that Shakspeare always gives the best direc- 
tions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. 
Thus, to take one example, Ophelia gives 
the following account of Hamlet ; and as 
Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think her 
word ought to be taken against that of any 
modern authority. 

" Ophelia. My lord, as I was reading in my closet, 
Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd, 
No hat upon his head, his stockings loose, 
Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ancle, 
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, 
And with a look so piteous, 
As if he had been sent from hell 
To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me. 

Polonius. Mad for thy love ! 

Oph. My lord, I do not know, 
But truly I do fear it. 

Pol. What said he ? 

Oph. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard. 
Then goes he to the length of all his arm ; 
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow, 
He falls to such perusal of my face, 
As he would draw it : long staid he so ; 
At last a little shaking of my arm, 
And thrice his head thus waving up and down, 
He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound, 
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, 
And end his being. That done, he lets me go, 
And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd, 
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes ; 
For out of doors he went without their help, 
And to the last bended their light on me." 

Act. If. Scene 1. 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 93 

How, after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular 
grace and bewildered melancholy, any one can 
play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with 
strut, and stare and antic right-angled sharp- 
pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it 
be that Hamlet is not bound, by the promp- 
ter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The 
account of Ophelia's death begins thus : 

" There is a willow hanging o'er a brook, 
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.' 5 — 

Now this is an instance of the same uncon- 
scious power of mind which is as true to 
nature as itself. The leaves of the willow 
are, in fact, white underneath, and it is this 
part of them which would appear i( hoary" in 
the reflection in the brook. The same sort 
of intuitive power, the same faculty of bring- 
ing every object in nature, whether present or 
absent, before the mind's eye, is observable 
in the speech of Cleopatra, when conjectur- 
ing what were the employments of Antony in 
his absence : — " He's speaking now, or mur- 
muring, Where's my serpent of old Nile V 
How fine to make Cleopatra have this con- 
sciousness of her own character, and to make 
her feel that it is this for which Antony is in 
love with her ! She says, after the battle of 
Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk 



!)4 ON SHAKSPEAKE AND MILTON. 

another fight, " It is my birth-day; I had 
thought to have held it poor : but since my 
lord is Antony again, [ will be Cleopatra/' 
What other poet would have thought of such 
a casual resource of the imagination, or 
would have dared to avail himself of it? The 
thing happens in the play as it might have 
happened in fact. That which, perhaps, 
more than any thing else distinguishes the 
dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all 
others, is this wonderful truth and individu- 
ality of conception. Each of his characters is 
as much itself, and as absolutely independent 
of the rest ? as well as of the author, as if they 
were living persons, not fictions of the mind. 
The poet may be said, for the time, to iden- 
tify himself with the character he wishes to 
represent, and to pass from one to another, 
like the same soul successively animating dif- 
ferent bodies. By an art like that of the 
ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of 
himself, and makes every word appear to pro- 
ceed from the mouth of the person in whose 
name it is given. His plays alone are properly 
expressions of the passions, not descriptions 
of them. His characters are real beings of 
flesh and blood ; they speak like men, not 
like authors. One might suppose that he 
had stood by at the time, and overheard what 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. £o 

passed. As in our dreams we hold con- 
versations with ourselves, make remarks, or 
communicate intelligence, and have no idea of 
the answer which we shall receive, and which 
we ourselves make, till we hear it — so the 
dialogues in Shakspeare are carried on without ( 
any consciousness of what is to follow, without 
any appearance of preparation or premedita- 
tion. The gusts of passion come and go like 
sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is 
made out by formal inference and analogy, by 
climax and antithesis : all comes, or seems to 
come, immediately from nature. Each object 
and circumstance exists in his mind, as it 
would have existed in reality : each several 
train of thought and feeling goes on of itself, 
without confusion or effort. In the world of 
his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, 
and being of its own ! 

Chaucer^s characters are sufficiently distinct 
from one another, but they are too little varied 
in themselves, too much like identical propo- 
sitions. They are consistent, but uniform; we 
get no new idea of them from first to last ; 
they are not placed in different lights, nor are 
their subordinate traits brought out in new 
situations ; they are like portraits or physiog- 
nomical studies, with the distinguishing fea- 
tures marked with inconceivable truth and 



90 ON SIIAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

precision, but that preserve the same unaltered 
air and attitude. Shakspeare's are historical 
figures, equally true and correct, but put into 
action, where every nerve and muscle is dis- 
played in the struggle with others, with all 
the effect of collision and contrast, with every 
variety of light and shade. Chaucer's charac- 
ters are narrative, Shakspeare's dramatic, 
Milton's epic. That is, Chaucer told only as 
much of his story as he pleased, as was required 
for a particular purpose. He answered for 
his characters himself. In Shakspeare they 
are introduced upon the stage, are liable to 
be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced 
to answer for themselves. In Chaucer we 
perceive a fixed essence of character. In 
Shakspeare there is a continual composition 
and decomposition of its elements, a fermen- 
tation of every particle in the whole mass, by 
its alternate affinity or antipathy to other 
principles which are brought in contact with 
it. Till the experiment is tried, we do not 
know the result, the turn which the character 
will take in its new circumstances. Milton 
took only a few simple principles of character, 
and raised them to the utmost conceivable gran- 
deur, and refined them from every base alloy. 
His imagination, " nigh sphered in Heaven," 
claimed kindred only with what he saw from 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 9/ 

that height, and could raise to the same eleva- 
tion with itself. He sat retired and kept his 
state alone, " playing with wisdom ;" while 
Shakspeare mingled with the crowd, and 
played the host, " to make society the sweeter 
welcome." 

The passion in Shakspeare is of the same 
nature as his delineation of character. It is 
not some one habitual feeling, or sentiment, 
preying upon itself, growing out of itself, and 
moulding everything to itself; it is passion 
modified by passion, by all the other feelings 
to which the individual is liable, and to which 
others are liable with him ; subject to all the 
fluctuations of caprice and accident ; calling 
into play all the resources of the understanding 
and all the energies of the will ; irritated by 
obstacles, or yielding to them ; rising from 
small beginnings to its utmost height ; now 
drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now 
sunk in despair, now blown to air with a 
breath, now raging like a torrent. The human 
soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey 
of adversity : it is stretched on the wheel of 
destiny, in restless ecstacy. The passions are 
in a state of projection. Years are melted 
down to moments, and every instant teems 
with fate. We know the resuLs, we see the 
process. Thus, after Iago has been boasting 

H 



98 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

to himself of the effect of his poisonous sug- 
gestions on the mind of Othello, " which, 
with a little act upon the blood, will work like 
mines of sulphur/' he adds — 

" Look where he comes ! not poppy, nor mandragora, 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East, 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou ow'dst yesterday." — 

And he enters at this moment, like the crested 
serpent^ crowned with his wrongs and raging 
for revenge ! The whole depends upon the 
turn of a thought. A word, a look, blows the 
spark of jealousy into a flame ; and the explo- 
sion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. 
The dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that 
between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all 
those in Shakspeare, where the interest is 
wrought up to its highest pitch, afford examples 
of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The 
interest in Chaucer is quite different ; it is like 
the course of a river, strong, and full, and 
increasing. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, 
it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, 
and loud-lashed by furious storms; while, in 
the still pauses of the blast, we distinguish 
only the cries of despair, or the silence of 
death ! Milton, on the other hand, takes the 
imaginative part of passion — that which re- 
mains after the event, which the mind reposes 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 99 

on when all is over, which looks upon circum- 
stances from the remotest elevation of thought 
and fancy, and abstracts them from the world 
of action to that of contemplation. The objects 
of dramatic poetry affect us by sympathy, by 
their nearness to ourselves, as they take us by 
surprise, or force us upon action, "while rage 
with rage doth sympathise :" the objects of 
epic poetry affect us through the medium of 
the imagination, by magnitude and distance, 
by their permanence and universality. The 
one fill us with terror and pity, the other with 
admiration and delight. There are certain 
objects that strike the imagination, and inspire 
awe in the very idea of them, independently of 
any dramatic interest, that is, of any connec- 
tion with the vicissitudes of human life. For 
instance, we cannot think of the pyramids of 
Egypt, of a Gothic ruin, or an old Roman 
encampment, without a certain emotion, a 
sense of power and sublimity coming over the 
mind. The heavenly bodies that hang over 
our heads wherever we go, and ic in their 
untroubled element shall shine when we are 
laid in dust, and all our cares forgotten/' affect 
us in the same way. Thus Satan's address to 
the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic interest ; 
for though the second person in the dialogue 
makes no answer and feels no concern, yet the 

h 2 



100 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

eye of that vast luminary is upon him, like the 
eye of Heaven, and seems conscious of what 
he says, like an universal presence. Dramatic 
poetry and epic, in their perfection, indeed, 
approximate to and strengthen one another. 
Dramatic poetry borrows aid from the dignity 
of persons and things, as the heroic does from 
human passion, but in theory they are distinct. 
When Richard II. calls for the looking-glass 
to contemplate his faded majesty in it, and 
bursts into that affecting exclamation : " Oh, 
that I were a mockery - king of snow, to melt 
away before the sun of Bolingbroke," we have 
here the utmost force of human passion, com- 
bined with the ideas of regal splendour and 
fallen power. When Milton says of Satan : 
« His f orm h a( j no t y e t lost 



All her original brightness, nor appear' d 
Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess 
Of glory obscur'd ;" — 

the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, 
from the sense of irreparable loss, of never- 
ending, unavailing regret, is perfect. 

The great fault of a modern school of 
poetry is that it is an experiment to reduce 
poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; 
or, what is worse, to divest it both of imagi- 
nary splendour and human passion, to surround 
the meanest objects with the morbid feelings 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 101 

and devouring egotism of the writers' own 
minds. Milton and Shakspeare did not so 
understand poetry. They gave a more liberal 
interpretation both to nature and art. They 
did not do all they could to get rid of the one 
and the other, to fill up the dreary void with 
the Moods of their own Minds. They owe 
their power over the human mind to their 
having had a deeper sense than others of what 
was grand in the objects of nature, or affecting 
in the events of human life. But to the men 
I speak of there is nothing interesting, nothing 
heroical, but themselves. To them the fall of 
gods or of great men is the same. They do 
not enter into the feeling. They cannot un- 
derstand the terms. They are even debarred 
from the last poor, paltry consolation of an 
unmanly triumph over fallen greatness; for 
their minds reject, with a convulsive effort and 
intolerable loathing, the very idea that there 
ever was, or was thought to be, any thing 
superior to themselves. All that has ever 
excited the attention or admiration of the 
world they look upon with the most perfect 
indifference ; and they are surprised to find 
that the world repays their indifference with 
scorn. " With what measure they mete, it 
has been meted to them again. 5 ' — ■ 

Shakspeare's imagination is of the same 



10^ ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

plastic kind as his conception of character or 
passion. " It glances from heaven to earth, 
from earth to heaven. " Its movement is rapid 
and devious. It unites the most opposite 
extremes ; or, as Puck says, in boasting of his 
own feats, " puts a girdle round about the 
earth in forty minutes." He seems always 
hurrying from his subject, even while descri- 
bing it ; but the stroke, like the lightning's, 
is sure as it is sudden. He takes the widest 
possible range, but from that very range he 
has his choice of the greatest variety and apti- 
tude of materials. He brings together images 
the most alike, but placed at the greatest dis- 
tance from each other ; that is, found in 
circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude. 
From the remoteness of his combinations, 
and the celerity with which they are effected, 
they coalesce the more indissolubly together. 
The more the thoughts are strangers to each 
other, and the longer they have been kept 
asunder, the more intimate does their union 
seem to become. Their felicity is equal to 
their force. Their likeness is made more 
dazzling by their novelty. They startle, and 
take the fancy prisoner in the same instant. 
I will mention one or two which are very 
striking, and not much known, out of Troilus 
and Cressida. iEneas says to Agamemnon. 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 103 

" I ask that I may waken reverence, 
And on the cheek be ready with a blush, 
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes 
The youthful Phcebus.' , 

Ulysses, urging Achilles to show himself in 
the field, says — 

" No man is the lord of any thing, 

Till he communicate his parts to others : 

Nor doth he of himself know them for aught, 

Till he behold them formed in the applause, 

Where they're extended ! which like an arch reverberates 

The voice again, or like a gate of steel, 

Fronting the sun, receives and renders back 

Its figure and its heat." 

Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same 
advice. 

" Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid 
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, 
And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane 
Be shook to air." 

Shakspeare's language and versification are 
like the rest of him. He has a magic power 
over words : they come winged at his bidding ; 
and seem to know their places. They are 
struck out at a heat, on the spur of the occa- 
sion, and have all the truth and vividness 
which arise from an actual impression of the 
objects. His epithets and single phrases are 
like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination 
fired by the whirling rapidity of its own mo- 



]04 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

tion. His language is hieroglyphical. It 
translates thoughts into visible images. It 
abounds in sudden transitions and elliptical 
expressions. This is the source of his mixed 
metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms 
of speech. These, however, give no pain 
from long custom. They have, in fact, become 
idioms in the language. They are the build- 
ing, and not the scaffolding to thought. We 
take the meaning and effect of a well-known 
passage entire, and no more stop to scan and 
spell out the particular words and phrases, 
than the syllables of which they are composed. 
In trying to recollect any other author, one 
sometimes stumbles, in case of failure, on a 
word as good. In Shakspeare, any other word 
but the true one, is sure to be wrong. If any 
body, for instance, could not recollect the 
words of the following description, 

" — Light thickens, 



And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood," 

he would be greatly at a loss to substitute 
others for them equally expressive of the 
feeling. These remarks, however, are 
strictly applicable only to the impassioned 
parts of Shakspeare's language, which flowed 
from the warmth and originality of his imagi- 
nation, and were his own. The language used 
for prose conversation and ordinary business 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND HILTON. 105 

is sometimes technical, and involved in the 
affectation of the time. Compare, for example, 
Othello's apology to the senate, relating " his 
whole course of love," with some of the pre- 
ceding parts relating to his appointment, and 
the official dispatches from Cyprus. In this 
respect, u the business of the state does him 
offence.'* His versification is no less power- 
ful, sweet, and varied. It has every occasional 
excellence, of sullen intricacy, crabbed and 
perplexed, or of the smoothest and loftiest 
expansion — from the ease and familiarity of 
measured conversation to the lyrical sounds 

il Of ditties highly penned, 



Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower, 
Yv r ith ravishing division to her lute." 

It is the only blank verse in the language. 
except Milton' s } that for itself is readable, 
It is not stately and uniformly swelling like 
his, but varied and broken by the inequalities 
of the ground it has to pass over in its uncer- 
tain course, 

" And so by many winding nooks it strays, 
With willing sport to the wild ocean. ,J 

It remains to speak of the faults of Shak- 
speare. They are not so many or so great as 
they have been represented ; what there are 
are chiefly owing to the following causes : — - 



106 ON SHAKSf»EARE AND MILTON. 

The universality of his genius was, perhaps, 
a disadvantage to his single works: the varietv 
of his resources, sometimes diverting him from 
applying them to the most effectual purposes. 
He might be said to combine the powers of 
iEsehylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and 
Rabelais, in his own mind. If he had been 
only half what he was, he would perhaps 
have appeared greater. The natural ease and 
indifference of his temper made him some- 
times less scrupulous than he might have 
been. He is relaxed and careless in critical 
places ; he is in earnest throughout only in 
Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had 
no models of acknowledged excellence con- 
stantly in view to stimulate his efforts, and, by- 
all that appears, no love of fame. He wrote 
for the " great vulgar and the small," in his 
i time, not for posterity. If Queen Elizabeth 
and the maids of honour laughed heartily at 
his worst jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery 
were silent at his best passages, he went home 
satisfied, and slept the next night well. He 
did not trouble himself about Voltaire's criti- 
cisms. He was willing to take advantage of 
the ignorance of the age in many things ; and 
if his plays pleased others, not to quarrel with 
them himself. His very facility of production 
would make him set less value on his own 



ON SHAKSPEARB AND MILTON. 10" 

excellences, and not care to distinguish nicely 
between what he did well or ill. His blunders 
in chronology and geography do not amount 
to above half a dozen, and they are offences 
against chronology and geography, not against 
poetry. As to the unities, he was right in 
setting them at defiance. He was fonder of 
puns than became so great a man. His bar- 
barisms were those of his age. His genius 
was his own. He had no objection to float 
down with the stream of common taste and 
opinion : he rose above it by his own buoy- 
ancy, and an impulse which he could not keep 
under, in spite of himself or others, and " his 
delights did show most dolphin-like. " 

He had an equal genius for comedy and 
tragedy ; and his tragedies are better than his 
comedies, because tragedy is better than 
comedy. His female characters, which have 
been found fault with as insipid, are the finest 
in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the 
least of a coxcomb of any one that ever lived, 
and much of a gentleman. 

Shakspeare discovers in his writings little 
religious enthusiasm, and an indifference to 
personal reputation ; he had none of the bigo- 
try of his age, and his political prejudices were 
not very strong. In these respects, as well as 
in every other, he formed a direct contrast to 



108 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invo- 
cation to the Muses; a hymn to Fame. He 
had his thoughts constantly fixed on the con- 
templation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a 
perfect commonwealth ; and he seized the pen 
with a hand just warm from the touch of the 
ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its 
character into his imagination ; so that he 
devotes himself with the same sense of duty 
to the cultivation of his genius, as he did to 
the exercise of virtue, or the good of his 
country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, 
and the prophet, vied with each other in his 
breast. His mind appears to have held equal 
communion with the inspired writers, and 
with the bards and sages of ancient Greece 
and Rome ; — 

" Blind Thamyris, and blind Moeonides, 
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old." 

He had a high standard, with which he was 
always comparing himself, nothing short of 
which could satisfy his jealous ambition. 

Sad task, yet argument 



Not less, but more heroic, than the wrath 
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued, 
If answerable still, I can obtain. 

Unless an age too late, or cold 

Climate, or years, damp my extended wing." 

He thought of nobler forms and nobler things 



ON SHAKSPEAEE AND MILTON. ] 09 

than those he found about him. He lived 
apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, 
carefully excluding from his mind whatever 
might distract its purposes or alloy its purity, 
or damp its zeal. u With darkness and with 
dangers compassed round/ 5 he had the mighty 
models of antiquity always present to his 
thoughts, and determined to raise a monu- 
ment of equal height and glory, " piling up 
every stone of lustre from the brook," for the 
delight and wonder of posterity. He had 
girded himself up, and, as it were, sanctified 
his genius to this service from his youth, 
" For after," he says, u I had from my first 
years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of 
my father, been exercised to the tongues, and 
some sciences, as my age could suffer, by 
sundry masters and teachers, it was found that 
whether aught was imposed upon me by them, 
or betaken to of my own choice, the style, by 
certain vital signs it had, was likely to live; 
but much latelier, in the private academies of 
Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I had 
in memory, composed at under twenty or 
thereabout, met with acceptance above what 
was looked for ; I began thus far to assent 
both to them and divers of my friends here at 
home, and not less to an inward prompting 
which now grew daily upon me, that by 



] 10 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

labour and intense study (which I take to be 
my portion in this life), joined with the strong 
propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave 
something so written to after-times as they 
should not willingly let it die. The accom- 
plishment of these intentions, which have 
lived within me ever since I could conceive 
myself any thing worth to my country, lies 
not but in a power above man's to promise ; 
but that none hath by more studious ways 
endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit 
that none shall, that I dare almost aver of my- 
self, as far as life and free leisure will extend. 
Neither do I think it shame to covenant with 
any knowing reader, that for some few years 
yet, I may go on trust with him toward the 
payment of what I am now indebted, as being 
a work not to be raised from the heat of youth 
or the vapours of wine ; like that which flows 
at waste from the pen of some vulgar amour- 
ist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, 
nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame 
Memory and her Siren daughters, but by 
devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can 
enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and 
sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire 
of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of 
whom he pleases : to this must be added 
industrious and select reading, steady observa- 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. Ill 

tion, and insight into all seemly and generous 
arts and affairs. Although it nothing content 
me to have disclosed thus much beforehand ; 
but that I trust hereby to make it manifest 
with what small willingness I endured to in- 
terrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, 
and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed 
with cheerful and confident thoughts, to em- 
bark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse 
disputes, from beholding the bright counte- 
nance of truth in the quiet and still air of 
delightful studies." 
So that of Spenser : 

" The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought, 
And is with child of glorious great intent, 
Can never rest until it forth have brought 
The eternal brood of glory excellent." 

Milton, therefore, did not write from casual 
impulse, but after a severe examination of his 
own strength, and with a resolution to leave 
nothing undone which it was in his power to 
do. He always labours, and almost always 
succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest 
things in the world, and he does say them. 
He adorns and dignifies his subject to the 
utmost : he surrounds it with every possible 
association of beauty or grandeur, whether 
moral, intellectual, or physical. He refines on 
his descriptions of beauty ; loading sweets on 



112 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

sweets, till the sense aches at them ; and raises 
his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, 
that " makes Ossa like a wart/' In Milton, 
there is always an appearance of effort : in 
Shakspeare, scarcely any. 

Milton has borrowed more than any other 
writer, and exhausted every source of imita- 
tion, sacred or prophane ; yet he is perfectly 
distinct from every other writer. He is a 
writer of centos, and yet in originality scarcely 
inferior to Homer. The power of his mind 
is stamped on every line. The fervour of his 
imagination melts down and renders malleable, 
as in a furnace, the most contradictory mate- 
rials. In reading his works, we feel ourselves 
under the influence of a mighty intellect, that 
the nearer it approaches to others, becomes 
more distinct from them. The quantity of 
art in him shows the strength of his genius : 
the weight of his intellectual obligations would 
have oppressed any other writer. Milton's 
learning has all the effect of intuition. He 
describes objects, of which he could only have 
read in books, with the vividness of actual 
observation. His imagination has the force 
of nature. He makes words tell as pictures. 

" Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat 
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks 
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams." 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. US 

The word lucid here gives to the idea all the 
sparkling effect of the most perfect landscape. 
And again : 

"As when a vulture on Imaus bred, 

Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, 

Dislodging from a region scarce of prey, 

To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids 

On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs 

Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams ; 

But in his way lights on the barren plains 

Of Sericana, where Chineses drive 

With sails and wind their cany waggons light.'* 

If Milton had taken a journey for the express 
purpose, he could not have described this sce- 
nery and mode of life better. Such passages 
are like demonstrations of natural history. 
Instances might be multiplied without end. 

There is also a decided tone in his descrip- 
tions, an eloquent dogmatism, as if the poet 
spoke from thorough conviction, which Milton 
probably derived from his spirit of partisan- 
ship, or else his spirit of partisanship from the 
natural firmness and vehemence of his mind. 
In this Milton resembles Dante (the only one 
of the modems with whom he has any thing 
in common), and it is remarkable that Dante, 
as well as Milton, was a political partisan. 
That approximation to the severity of impas- 
sioned prose, which has been made an objec- 
tion to Milton 5 s poetry, is one of its chief 
excellences. 

i 



114 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

We might be tempted to suppose that the 
vividness with which he describes visible 
objects was owing to their having acquired 
an unusual degree of strength in his mind, 
after the privation of his sight ; but we find 
the same palpableness and truth in the de- 
scriptions which occur in his early poems. 
In Lycidas he speaks of " the great vision of 
the guarded mount," with that preternatural 
weight of impression with which it would 
present itself suddenly to " the pilot of some 
small night - foundered skiff:" and the lines 
in the Penseroso, describing " the wandering 
moon, 

" Riding near her highest noon, 
Like one that had been led astray- 
Through the heaven's wide pathless way,' 1 

are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking 
at her. There is also the same depth of im- 
pression in his descriptions of the objects of 
all the different senses, whether colours, or 
sounds, or smells — the same absorption of his 
mind in whatever engaged his attention at the 
time. Milton had as much of what is meant 
by gusto as any poet. # He forms the most 

* The infinite quantity of dramatic invention in Shak- 
speare takes from his gusto. The power he delights to show 
is not intense, but discursive. He never insists on any 
thing as much as he might, except a quibble. 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 115 

intense conception of things, and then embo- 
dies them by a single stroke of his pen. He 
has an inveterate attachment to the objects he 
describes and to the words describing them : 
" Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss. 5 * 
It has been indeed objected to Milton, by 
a common perversity of criticism, that his ideas 
were musical rather than picturesque, as if, 
because they were in the highest degree mu- 
sical, they must be (to keep the sage criti- 
cal balance even, and to allow no one man 
to possess two qualities at the same time) 
proportionably deficient in other respects. — ■ 
But Milton's poetry is not cast in any such 
narrow, common-place mould ; it is not so 
barren of resources. His worship of the Muse 
was not so simple or confined. A sound 
arises " like a steam of rich distilled per- 
fumes ;" we hear the pealing organ, but the 
incense on the altars is also there, and the 
statues of the gods are ranged around ! The 
ear indeed predominates over the eye, because 
it is more immediately affected, and because 
the language of music blends more immediately 
with, and forms a more natural accompani- 
ment to, the variable and indefinite associa- 
tions of ideas conveyed by words. But where 
the associations of the imagination are not the 
principal thing, the individual object is given 

i 2 



116 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

by Milton with equal force and beauty. The 
strongest and best proof of this, as a charac- 
teristic power of his mind, is, that the persons 
of Adam and Eve, of Satan, &c, are always 
accompanied, in our imagination, with the 
grandeur of the naked figure ; they convey to 
us the idea of sculpture. As an instance, take 
the following : 

« He soon 



Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, 

The same whom John saw also in the sun : 

His back was turned, but not his brightness hid ; 

Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar 

Circled his head, nor less his locks behind 

Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings 

Lay waving round; on some great charge employ'd 

He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep. 

Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope 

To find who might direct his wand'ring flight 

To Paradise, the happy seat of man 

His journey's end, and our beginning woe. 

But first he casts to change his proper shape, 

Which else might work him danger or delay : 

And now a stripling cherub he appears, 

Not of the prime, yet such as in his face 

Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb 

Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd : 

Under a coronet his flowing hair 

In curls on either cheek play'd; wings he wore 

Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold, 

His habit fit for speed succinct, and held 

Before his decent steps a silver wand." 

The figures introduced here have all the 
elegance and precision of a Greek statue ; 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 11/ 

glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden 
light, and musical as the strings of Memnon's 
harp ! 

Again, nothing can be more magnificent 
than the portrait of Beelzebub : 

" With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies:" 

Or the comparison of Satan, as he " lay float- 
ing many a rood/* to " that sea beast/' 

" Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream ! " 

What a force of imagination is there in this 
last expression ! What an idea it conveys of 
the size of that hugest of created beings, as if 
it shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took 
up the sea in its nostrils as a very little thing ! 
Force of style is one of Milton's greatest ex- 
cellences. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us 
more in the reading, and less afterwards. 
The way to defend Milton against all im- 
pugners is to take down the book and read it. 
Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse 
in the language (except Shakspeare's) that 
deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, 
who had modelled his ideas of versification on 
the regular sing-song of Pope, condemns the 



] 18 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall 
not pretend to say that this is not sometimes 
the case ; for where a degree of excellence 
beyond the mechanical rules of art is at- 
tempted, the poet must sometimes fail. But 
I imagine that there are more perfect examples 
in Milton of musical expression, or of an 
adaptation of the sound and movement of the 
verse to the meaning of the passage, than in 
all our other writers, whether of rhyme or 
blank verse, put together (with the exception 
already mentioned). Spenser is the most har- 
monious of our stanza writers, as Dryden is 
the most sounding and varied of our rhymists. 
But in neither is there any thing like the same 
ear for music, the same power of approxi- 
mating the varieties of poetical, to those of 
musical, rhythm, as there is in our great epic 
poet. The sound of his lines is moulded into 
the expression of the sentiment, almost of the 
very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry 
rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without the 
least trick or affectation, as the occasion seems 
to require. 

The following are some of the finest in- 
stances : 

« — — _ — __„ His hand was known 



In heaven by many a tower'd structure high ;— 

Nor was his name unheard or unador'd 

In ancient Greece : and in the Ausonian land 



OX SIIAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 119 

Men called him Mulciber : and how he fell 
From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements ; from morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun 
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star 
On Lemnos, the iEgean isle : thus they relate, 
Erring." — 

" But chief the spacious hall 

Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air, 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees 

In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, 

Pour forth their populous youth about the hive 

In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flow'rs 

Fly to and fro : or on the smoothed plank, 

The suburb of their straw-built citadel, 

New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer 

Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd 

Swarm'd and were straiten'd ; till the signal giv'n, 

Behold a wonder ! They but now who seem'd 

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, 

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 

Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race 

Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, 

Whose midnight revels by a forest side 

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 

Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon 

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 

Wheels her pale course : they on their mirth and dance 

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; 

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds." 

I can only give another instance, though I 
have some difficulty in leaving oft*. 

" Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood 
So high above the circling canopy 
Of night's extended shade) from th' eastern point 



120 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears 

Andromeda far off Atlantic seas 

Beyond the horizon : then from pole to po^e 

He views in breadth, and without longer pau^e 

Down right into the world's first region throws 

His flight precipitant, and winds with ease 

Through the pure marble air his oblique way 

Amongst innumerable stars that shone 

Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds ; 

Or other worlds they seem'd or happy isles," &c. 

The verse, in this exquisitely modulated 
passage, floats up and down as if it had itself 
wings. Milton has himself given us the theory 
of his versification — 

" Such as the meeting soul may pierce 
In notes with many a winding bout 
Of linked sweetness long drawn out." 

Dr. Johnson and Pope would have convert- 
ed his vaulting Pegasus into a rocking-horse. 
Read any other blank verse but Milton's, — 
Thomson's, Young's, Cowper's, Wordsworth's, 
— and it will be found, from the want of the 
same insight into " the hidden soul of har- 
mony/' to be mere lumbering prose. 

To proceed to a consideration of the merits 
of Paradise Lost, in the most essential point 
of view, 1 mean as to the poetry of character 
and passion. I shall say nothing of the fable, 
or of other technical objections or excellences ; 
but I shall try to explain at once the founda- 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 121 

tion of the interest belonging to the poem. I 
am ready to give up the dialogues in Heaven, 
where, as Pope justly observes, " God the 
Father turns a school-divine ;" nor do I con- 
sider the battle of the angels as the climax of 
sublimity, or the most successful effort of 
Milton's pen. In a word, the interest of the 
poem arises from the daring ambition and 
fierce passions of Satan, and from the account 
of the paradisaical happiness^ and the loss of it 
by our first parents. Three-fourths of the 
work are taken up with these characters, and 
nearly all that relates to them is unmixed 
sublimity and beauty. The two first books 
alone are like two massy pillars of solid gold. 
Satan is the most heroic subject that ever 
was chosen for a poem ; and the execution is 
as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the 
first of created beings, who, for endeavouring 
to be equal with the highest, and to divide 
the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was 
hurled down to hell. His aim was no less 
than the throne of the universe ; his means, 
myriads of angelic armies bright, the third 
part of the heavens, whom he lured after him 
with his countenance, and who durst defy the 
Omnipotent in arms. His ambition was the 
greatest, and his punishment was the greatest; 
but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as 



122 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

great as his sufferings. His strength of mind 
was matchless as his strength of body ; the 
vastness of his designs did not surpass the 
firm, inflexible determination with which he 
submitted to his irreversible doom, and final 
loss of all good. His power of action and of 
suffering was equal. He was the greatest 
power that was ever overthrown, with the 
strongest will left to resist or to endure. He 
vas baffled, not confounded. He stood like 
a tower ; or 



As when Heaven's fire 



Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines.'" 

He is still surrounded with hosts of rebel 
angels, armed warriors, who own him as their 
sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sym- 
pathises as he views them round, far as the 
eye can reach ; though he keeps aloof from 
them in his own mind, and holds supreme 
counsel only with his own breast. An outcast 
from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, 
Sin and Death are at his heels, and mankind 
are his easy prey. 

" All is not lost ; th' unconquerable will, 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield, 
And what else is not to be overcome," 

are still his. The sense of his punishment 
seems lost in the magnitude of it ; the fierce- 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON, 123 

ness of tormenting flames is qualified and made 
innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride; 
the loss of infinite happiness to himself is com- 
pensated in thought by the power of inflicting 
infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the 
principle of malignity, or of the abstract love of 
evil, but of the abstract love of power, of pride, 
of self-will personified, to which last principle 
all other good and evil, and even his ow r n, are 
subordinate. From this principle he never 
once flinches. His love of power and con- 
tempt for suffering are never once relaxed 
from the highest pitch of intensity. His 
thoughts burn like a hell within him ; but the 
power of thought holds dominion in his mind 
over every other consideration. The consci- 
ousness of a determined purpose, of u that 
intellectual being, those thoughts that wan- 
der through eternity," though accompanied 
with endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to 
" being swallowed up and lost in the wide 
womb of uncreated night/ 5 He expresses the 
sum and substance of all ambition in one line. 
" Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, 
doing or suffering ! " After such a conflict as 
his, and such a defeat, to retreat in order, to 
rally, to make terms, to exist at all, is some- 
thing ; but he does more than this- — he founds 
a new empire in hell, and from it conquers 



124 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

this new world, whither he bends his undaunted 
flight, forcing his way through nether and 
surrounding tires. The poet has not in all 
this given us a mere shadowy outline; the 
strength is equal to the magnitude of the con- 
ception. The Achilles of Homer is not more 
distinct ; the Titans were not more vast ; 
Prometheus, chained to his rock, was not a 
more terrific example of suffering and of 
crime. Wherever the figure of Satan is intro- 
duced, whether he walks or flies, " rising aloft 
incumbent on the dusky air," it is illustrated 
with the most striking and appropriate images : 
so that we see it always before us, gigantic, 
irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed — 
but dazzling in its faded splendour, the clouded 
ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is 
only in the depravity of his will ; he has no 
bodily deformity to excite our loathing or dis- 
gust. The horns and tail are not there, poor 
emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, 
of the writhing agonies within. Milton was 
too magnanimous and open an antagonist to 
support his argument by the bye-tricks of a 
hump and cloven foot ; to bring into the fair 
field of controversy the good old catholic pre- 
judices of which Tasso and Dante have availed 
themselves, and which the mystic German 
critics would restore. He relied on the justice 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 1^5 

of his cause, and did not scruple to give the 
devil his due. Some persons may think that 
he has carried his liberality too far, and injured 
the cause he professed to espouse by making 
him the chief person in his poem. Consider- 
ing the nature of his subject, he would be 
equally in danger of running into this fault, 
from his faith in religion, and his love of re- 
bellion ; and. perhaps each of these motives 
had its full share in determining the choice of 
his subject. 

Xot only the figure of Satan, but his 
speeches in council, his soliloquies, his address 
to Eve, his share in the war in heaven, or in 
the fall of man, show the same decided supe- 
riority of character. To give only one instance, 
almost the first speech he makes : 

44 Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, 
Said then the lost archangel, this the seat 
That we must change for Heaven; this mournful gloom 
For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he 
Who now is sov'rain can dispose and bid 
"What shall be right : farthest from him is best 
Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme 
Above his equals. Farewel happ}^ fields, 
"Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail horrors, hail 
Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest Hell, 
Receive thy new possessor ; one who brings 
A mind not to be chang'd by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. 
What matter where, if I be still the same, 



126 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

And what I should be, all but less than he 
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least 
We shall be free ; th' Almighty hath not built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence : 
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice 
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell : 
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." 

The whole of the speeches and debates in 
Pandemonium are well w r orthy of the place 
and the occasion — with gods for speakers, 
and angels and archangels for hearers. There 
is a decided manly tone in the arguments and 
sentiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each 
person spoke from thorough conviction. The 
author might here turn his philippics against 
Salmasius to good account. The rout in Hea- 
ven is like the fall of some mighty structure, 
nodding to its base, " with hideous ruin and 
combustion down." But, perhaps, of all the 
passages in Paradise Lost, the description of 
the employments of the angels during the 
absence of Satan, some of whom " retreated 
in a silent valley, sing with notes angelical to 
many a harp their own heroic deeds and hap- 
less fall by doom of battle,'' is the most perfect 
example of mingled pathos and sublimity. — 
What proves the truth of this noble picture in 
every part, and that the frequent complaint of 
want of interest in it is the fault of the reader, 
not of the poet, is that when any interest of a 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 127 

practical kind takes a shape that can be at all 
turned into this (and there is little doubt that 
Milton had some such in his eye in writing it), 
each party converts it to its own purposes, 
feels the absolute identity of these abstracted 
and high speculations ; and that, in fact, a 
noted political writer of the present day ha-s 
exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan 
in the Paradise Lost, by applying it to a cha- 
racter whom he considered as, after the devil, 
(though I do not know whether he would 
make even that exception) the greatest enemy 
of the human race. This may serve to show 
that Milton's Satan is not a very insipid per- 
sonage. 

Of Adam and Eve it has been said that the 
ordinary reader can feel little interest in them, 
because they have none of the passions, pur- 
suits, or even relations of human life, except 
that of man and wife, the least interesting of 
all others, if not to the parties concerned, at 
least to the by-standers. The preference has 
on this account been given to Homer, who, it 
is said, has left very vivid and infinitely diver- 
sified pictures of all the passions and affec- 
tions, public and private, incident to human 
nature — the relations of son, of brother, 
parent, friend, citizen, and many others. — 
Longinus preferred the Iliad to the Odyssey, 



128 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 

on account of the greater number of battles it 
contains ; but I can neither agree to his criti- 
cism, nor assent to the present objection. It 
is true there is little action in this part of 
Milton's poem ; but there is much repose, 
and more enjoyment. There are none of the 
every-day occurrences, contentions, disputes, 
wars, fightings, feuds, jealousies, trades, pro- 
fessions, liveries, and common handicrafts of 
life ; (t no kind of traffic ; letters are not 
known ; no use of service, of riches, poverty, 
contract, succession, bourne, bound of land, 
tilth, vineyard, none ; no occupation, no trea- 
son, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, nor need 
of any engine." So much the better ; thank 
Heaven, all these were yet to come. But 
still the die was cast, and in them our doom 
was sealed. In them 

" The generations were prepared ; the pangs, 
The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife 
Of x>oor humanity's afflicted will, 
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." 

In their first false step we trace all our 
future woe, with loss of Eden. But there 
was a short and precious interval between, 
like the first blush of morning before the day 
is overcast with tempest, the dawn of the 
world, the birth of nature from " the unap- 
parent deep, 5 ' with its first dews and fresh- 



ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 129 

ness on its cheek, breathing odours. Theirs 
was the first delicious taste of life, and on 
them depended all that was to come of it. 
In them hung trembling all our hopes and 
fears. They were as yet alone in the world, 
in the eye of nature, wondering at their new 
being, full of enjoyment, and enraptured with 
one another, with the voice of their Maker 
walking in the garden, and ministering angels 
attendant on their steps, winged messengers 
from heaven like rosy clouds descending in 
their sight. Nature played around them her 
virgin fancies wild ; and spread for them a 
repast " where no crude surfeit reigned.' 5 Was 
there nothing in this scene, which God and 
nature alone witnessed, to interest a modern 
critic ? What need was there of action, where 
the heart was full of bliss and innocence 
without it? They had nothing to do but feel 
their own happiness, and te know to know no 
more/' " They toiled not, neither did they 
spin ; yet Solomon in all his glory was not 
arrayed like one of these. 55 All things seem 
to acquire fresh sweetness, and to be clothed 
with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted 
as it were for themselves and us, of all that 
there ever was pure in human bliss. "In 
them the burthen of the mvsterv, the heavv 
and the weary weight of all this unintelligible 

K 



130 ON SHAKSPEARE AND MIL-TON. 

world, is lightened. " They stood awhile 
perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were 
driven out of Paradise, tasting the first fruits 
of bitterness as they had done of bliss. But 
their pangs were such as a pure spirit might 
feel at the sight — their tears " such as angels 
weep/' The pathos is of that mild contem- 
plative kind which arises from regret for the 
loss of unspeakable happiness, and resignation 
to inevitable fate. There is none of the fierce- 
ness of intemperate passion, none of the agony 
of mind and turbulence of action, which is the 
result of the habitual struggle of the will with 
circumstances, irritated by repeated disap- 
pointment, and constantly setting its desires 
most eagerly on that which there is an impos- 
sibility of attaining. This would have de- 
stroyed the beauty of the whole picture. — 
They had received their unlooked-for happi- 
ness as a free gift from their Creator's hands, 
and they submitted to its loss, not without 
sorrow, but without impious and stubborn 
repining. 

" In either hand the hast'ning angel caught 
Our ling'ring parents, and to th' eastern gate 
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast 
To the subjected plain ; then disappear'd. 
They, looking back, all th' eastern side beheld 
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, 
Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate 



OX SHAKSPEARE AND iMILTON. 131 

With dreadful faces throng' d, and fiery arms: 
Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon ; 
The world was all before them, where to choose 
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." * 



* In the Appendix will be found the Author's criticisms 
on Milton's "Eve" and " Lycidas." 



LECTURE IV. 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

Dryden and Pope are the great masters of 
the artificial style of poetry in our language, 
as the poets of whom I have already treated, 
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, 
were of the natural ; and though this artificial 
style is generally and very justly acknowledged 
to be inferior to the other, yet those w 7 ho stand 
at the head of that class ought, perhaps, to 
rank higher than those who occupy an inferior 
place in a superior class. They have a clear 
and independent claim upon our gratitude, as 
having produced a kind and degree of excel- 
lence which existed equally nowhere else. 
What has been done well by some later 
writers of the highest style of poetry, is in- 
cluded in, and obscured by, a greater degree 
of power and genius in those before them : 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 133 

what has been done best by poets of an en- 
tirely distinct turn of mind, stands by itself, 
and tells for its whole amount. Young, for 
instance, Gray, or Akenside, only follow in 
the train of Milton and Shakspeare : Pope 
and Dryden walk by their side, though of an 
unequal stature, and are entitled to a first 
place in the lists of fame. This seems to be 
not only the reason of the thing, but the com- 
mon sense of mankind, who, without any 
regular process of reflection, judge of the 
merit of a work not more by its inherent and 
absolute worth than by its originality and 
capacity of gratifying a different faculty of the 
mind, or a different class of readers ; for it 
should be recollected that there may be read- 
ers (as well as poets) not of the highest class, 
though very good sort of people, and not 
altogether to be despised. 

The question, whether Pope was a poet, 
has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly 
worth settling ; for, if he was not a great poet, 
he must have been a great prose- writer, that 
is, he was a great writer of some sort. He 
was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the 
most refined taste ; and as he chose verse (the 
most obvious distinction of poetry) as the 
vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally 
passed for a poet, and a good one. If, indeed, 



J 34 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

by a great poet, we mean one who gives the 
utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, 
or the utmost force to the passions of the 
heart, Pope was not in this sense a great 
poet ; for the bent, the characteristic power 
of his mind, lay the clean contrary way ; 
namely, in representing things as they appear 
to the indifferent observer, stripped of preju- 
dice and passion, as in his Critical Essays; or 
in representing them in the most contemptible 
and insignificant point of view, as in his 
Satires ; or in clothing the little with mock- 
dignity, as in his poems of Fancy ; or in 
adorning the trivial incidents and familiar 
relations of life with the utmost elegance of 
expression, and all the flattering illusions of 
friendship or self-love, as in his Epistles. He 
was not then distinguished as a poet of lofty 
enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a pas- 
sionate sense of the beauties of nature, or a 
deep insight into the workings of the heart ; 
but he was a wit, and a critic, a man of sense, 
of observation, and the world, with a keen 
relish for the elegances of art, or of nature 
when embellished by art, a quick tact for 
propriety of thought and manners as esta- 
blished by the forms and customs of society, 
refined sympathy with the sentiments and 
habitudes of human life, as he felt them 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 135 

within the little circle of his family and 
friends. He was, in a word, the poet, not 
of nature, but of art ; and the distinction 
between the two, as well as I can make it 
oat, is this : — The poet of nature is one who, 
from the elements of beauty, of power, and 
of passion in his own breast, sympathises 
with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and 
impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, 
in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the 
thoughts and hearts of all men ; so that the 
poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and 
harmony of his mind, may be said to hold 
communion with the very soul of nature ; to 
be identified with, and to foreknow, and to 
record, the feelings of all men, at all times and 
places, as they are liable to the same impres- 
sions ; and to exert the same power over the 
minds of his readers that nature does. Pie 
sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees 
them as they are ; he feels them in their uni- 
versal interest, for he feels them as they affect 
the first principles of his and our common 
nature. Such was Homer, such was Shak- 
speare, whose works will last as long as 
nature, because they are a copy of the inde- 
structible forms and everlasting impulses of 
nature, welling out from the bosom as from a 
perennial spring, or stamped upon the senses 



136 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

by the hand of their Maker. The power of 
the imagination in them is the representative 
power of all nature. It has its centre in the 
human soul, and makes the circuit of the 
universe. 

Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, 
or in the first rank of it. He saw nature 
only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by 
fashion ; he sought for truth in the opinions 
of the world ; he judged of the feelings of 
others by his own. The capacious soul of 
Shakspeare had an intuitive and mighty sym- 
pathy with whatever could enter into the 
heart of man in all possible circumstances : 
Pope had an exact knowledge of all that he 
himself loved or hated, wished or wanted. 
Milton has winged his daring flight from hea- 
ven to earth, through Chaos and old Night. 
Pope's Muse never wandered with safety, but 
from his library to his grotto, or from his 
grotto into his library back again. His mind 
dwelt with greater pleasure on his own garden 
than on the garden of Eden ; he could de- 
scribe the faultless whole-length mirror that 
reflected his own person better than the 
smooth surface of the lake that reflects the 
face of heaven — a piece of cut glass or a 
pair of paste buckles with more brilliance 
and effect than a thousand dew-drops glit- 
tering in the sun. He would be more de- 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 137 

lighted with a patent lamp than with u the 
pale reflex of Cynthia's brow/' that tills the 
skies with its soft silent lustre, that trembles 
through the cottage window, and cheers the 
watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In 
short, he was the poet of personality and of 
polished life. That which was nearest to 
him was the greatest ; the fashion of the day 
bore sway in his mind over the immutable 
laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to 
the natural in external objects, because he had 
a stronger fellow-feeling with the self-love of 
the maker or proprietor of a gewgaw than 
admiration of that which was interesting to all 
mankind. He preferred the artificial to the 
natural in passion, because the involuntary 
and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried 
him away with a force and vehemence with 
which he could not grapple ; while he could 
trifle with the conventional and superficial 
modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh 
at or admire, put them on or off like a mas- 
querade-dress, make much or little of them, 
indulge them for a longer or a shorter time, 
as he pleased; and because, while they amused 
his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they 
never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or 
indifference. His mind was the antithesis of 
strength and grandeur; its power was the power 
of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm 



138 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

of poetry ; he was in poetry what the sceptic 
is in religion. 

It cannot be denied that his chief excel- 
lence lay more in diminishing than in ag- 
grandizing objects ; in checking, not in 
encouraging, our enthusiasm; in sneering at 
the extravagances of fancy or passion, instead 
of giving a loose to them ; in describing a 
row of pins and needles rather than the 
embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans ; in 
penning a lampoon or a compliment, and in 
praising Martha Blount. 

Shakspeare says, 

"• ■ In Fortune's ray and brightness 



The herd hath more annoyance by the brize 
Than by the tyger : but when the splitting wind 
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, 
And flies fled under shade, why then 
The thing of courage, 

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise ; 
And, with an accent tuned in the self-same key, 
Replies to chiding Fortune." 

There is none of this rough work in Pope. 
His Muse was on a peace-establishment, and 
grew somewhat effeminate by long ease and 
indulgence. He lived in the smiles of for- 
tune, and basked in the favour of the great. 
In his smooth and polished verse we meet 
with no prodigies of nature, but with miracles 
of wit ; the thunders of his pen are whispered 



OX DRYDEX AXD POPE, ?39 

flatteries; its forked lightnings pointed sar- 
casms ; for " the gnarled oak/' he gives us 
" the soft myrtle :" for rocks, and seas, and 
mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, 
and tinkling rills ; for earthquakes and tem- 
pests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or the fall 
of a china jar ; for the tug and war of the 
elements, or the deadly strife of the passions, 
we have 

K Calm contemplation and poetic ease." 
Yet within this retired and narrow circle how 
much, and that how exquisite, was contained ! 
What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, 
what fancy, what lurking spleen, what ele- 
gance of thought, what pampered refinement 
of sentiment ! It is like looking at the world 
through a microscope, where every thing as- 
sumes a new character and a new consequence, 
where things are seen in their minutest cir- 
cumstances and slightest shades of difference ; 
where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed 
beautiful, and the beautiful deformed. The 
wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held 
to every thing, but still the exhibition is highly 
curious, and we know not whether to be most 
pleased or surprised. Such, at least, is the 
best account I am able to give of this extra- 
ordinary man, without doing injustice to him 
or others. It is time to refer to particular 



140 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

instances in his works. — The Rape of the 
Lock is the best or most ingenious of these. 
It is the most exquisite specimen of jillagree 
work ever invented. It is admirable in pro- 
portion as it is made of nothng. 

" More subtle web Arachne cannot spin, 
Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see 
Of scorched dew, do not in th' air more lightly flee." 

It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The 
most glittering appearance is given to every 
thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and 
patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around ; 
the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. 
A toilette is described with the solemnity of 
an altar raised to the goddess of vanity, and 
the history of a silver bodkin is given with ail 
the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, 
no profusion of ornament, no splendour ot 
poetic diction, to set off the meanest things. 
The balance between the concealed irony and 
the assumed gravity is as nicely trimmed as 
the balance of power in Europe. The little 
is made great, and the great little. You 
hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is 
the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis 
of foppery and folly. It is the perfection of 
the mock-heroic ! I will give only the two 
following passages in illustration of these re- 
marks. Can any thing be more elegant and 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 141 

graceful than the description of Belinda, in the 
beginning of the second canto ? 

" Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain, 
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main, 
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams 
Launch'd on the bottom of the silver Thames, 
Fair nymphs, and well-drest youths around her shone. 
But ev'ry eye was fiVd on her alone. 
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, 
Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore. 
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 
Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those ; 
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends ; 
Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike ; 
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike, 
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, 
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide : 
If to her share some female errors fall, 
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. 

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, 
Nourish' d two locks, which graceful hung behind 
In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck 
With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck." 

The following is the introduction to the 
account of Belinda's assault upon the baron 
bold, who had dissevered one of these locks 
gt from her fair head for ever and for ever," 

(< Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd, 
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. 
(The same his ancient personage to deck, 
Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck, 
In three seal-rings ; which after, melted down, 
Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown : 



142 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew, 
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew ; 
Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs 
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.") 

I do not know how far Pope was indebted 
for the original idea, or the delightful execu- 
tion of this poem, to the Lutrin of Boileau. 

The Rape of the Lock is a double-refined 
essence of wit and fancy, as the Essay on 
Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity 
of thought and observation in this work, for 
so young a man as Pope was when he wrote 
it, is wonderful : unless we adopt the suppo- 
sition that most men of genius spend the rest 
of their lives in teaching others what they 
themselves have learned under twenty. The 
conciseness and felicity of the expression are 
equally remarkable. Thus, on reasoning on 
the variety of men's opinion, he says — » 

" 'Tis with our judgments, as our watches ; none 
Go just alike, yet each believes his own." 

Nothing can be more original and happy than 
the general remarks and illustrations in the 
Essay : the critical rules laid down are too 
much those of a school, and of a confined one. 
There is one passage in the Essay on Criti- 
cism in which the author speaks with that 
eloquent enthusiasm of the fame of ancient 
vfriters, which those will alwavs feel who have 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 143 

themselves any hope or chance of immortality. 
I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I 
will repeat it here. 

" Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; 
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, 
Destructive war, and all-involving age. 
Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, 
Immortal heirs of universal praise ! 
Whose honours with increase of ages grow, 
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow." 

These lines come with double force and beauty 
on the reader, as they were dictated by the 
writer's despair of ever attaining that lasting 
glory which he celebrates with such disinte- 
rested enthusiasm in others, from the lateness 
of the age in which he lived, and from his 
writing in a tongue not understood by other 
nations, and that grows obsolete and unintel- 
ligible to ourselves at the end cf every second 
century. But he needed not have thus ante- 
dated his ow 7 n poetical doom — the loss and en- 
tire oblivion of that which can never die. If 
he had known, he might have boasted that " his 
little bark" wafted down the stream of tune, 

" With theirs should sail, 

Pursue the triumph and partake the gale " — 

if those who know how to set a due value on 
the blessing were not the last to decide confi- 
dently on their own pretensions to it. 



144 OX DRYDF.\' AND POPE. 

There is a cant in the present day about 
genius, as every thing in poetry : there was a 
cant in the time of Pope about sense, as per- 
forming all sorts of wonders. It was a kind 
of watchword, the shibboleth of a critical 
party of the day. As a proof of the exclusive 
attention which it occupied in their minds, it 
is remarkable that in the Essay on Criticism 
(not a very long poem) there are no less than 
half a score successive couplets rhyming to the 
word sense. This appears almost incredible 
without giving the instances, and no less so 
when they are given. 

" But of the two, less dangerous is the offence 

To tire our patience than mislead our sense." — lines 3, 4. 
" In search of wit these lose their common sense, 

And then turn critics in their own defence." — 7. 28, 29. 
li Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, 

And fills up all the mighty void of sense." — 7. 209, 10, 
" Some by old words to fame have made pretence, 

Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense." — 1. 324,5. 
" 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence ; 

The sound must seem an echo to the sense." — Z. 364, 5. 
" At every trifle scorn to take offence ; 

That always shows great pride or little sense." — Z. 386, 7. 
(i Be silent always, when you doubt your sense, 

And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence." — Z.366,7 
is Be niggards of advice on no pretence, 

For the worst avarice is that of sense." — 1. 578, 9. 
(i Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense, 

And rhyme with all the rage of impotence." — Z. 608, 9. 
" Horace still charms with graceful negligence, 

And without method talks us into sense." — J. 653, 4. 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 145 

I have mentioned this the more for the sake 
of those critics who are bigotted idolisers of 
our author, chiefly on the score of his correct- 
ness. These persons seem to be of opinion 
that " there is but one perfect writer, even 
Pope/' This isj however, a mistake : his 
excellence is by no means faultlessness. If he 
had no great faults, he is full of little errors. 
His grammatical construction is often lame 
and imperfect. In the Abelard and Eloise, 
he says — 

" There died the best of passions, Love and Fame." 

This is not a legitimate ellipsis. Fame is not 
a passion, though love is : but his ear was 
evidently confused by the meeting of the 
sounds " love and fame," as if they of them- 
selves immediately implied, " love, and love 
of fame." Pope's rhymes are constantly 
defective, being rhymes to the eye instead of 
the ear; and this to a greater degree, not only 
than in later, but than in preceding, writers. 
The praise of his versification must be con- 
fined to its uniform smoothness and harmony. 
In the translation of the Iliad, which has been 
considered as his masterpiece in style and 
execution, he continually changes the tenses 
in the same sentence for the purposes of the 
rhyme, which shows either a want of tech- 

L 



146 



ON DRYDKN AND POPE. 



nical resources, or great inattention to puncti- 
lious exactness. But to have done with this. 
The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only 
exception, I can think of, to the general spirit 
of the foregoing remarks ; and I should be 
disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an 
exception. The foundation is in the letters 
themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are 
quite as impressive, but still in a different 
way. It is fine as a poem: it is finer as a 
piece of high-wrought eloquence. No woman 
could be supposed to write a better love-letter 
in verse. Besides the richness of the historical 
materials, the high gusto of the original senti- 
ments which Pope had to work upon, there 
were perhaps circumstances in his own situa- 
tion which made him enter into the subject 
with even more than a poet's feeling. The 
tears shed are drops gushing from the heart : 
the words are burning sighs breathed from the 
soul of love. Perhaps the poem to which it 
bears the greatest similarity in our language 
is Dryden's Tailored and Sigismunda, taken 
from Boccaccio. Pope's Eloise will bear this 
comparison ; and after such a test, with Boc- 
caccio for the original author, and Dryden for 
the translator, it need shrink from no other. 
There is something exceedingly tender and 
beautiful in the sound of the concluding lines : 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 147 

s< If ever chance two wandering lovers brings 

To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs," &c. 

The Essay on Man is not Pope's best work. 
It is a theory which Bolingbroke is supposed 
to have given him, and which he expanded 
into verse. But "he spins the thread of his 
verbosity finer than the staple of his argu- 
ment.' 5 All that he says, " the very words, 
and to the self-same tune, 55 would prove just 
as well that whatever is is wrong, as that 
whatever is is right. The Dunciad has 
splendid passages, but in general it is dull, 
heavy, and mechanical. The sarcasm already 
quoted on Settle, the Lord Mayor's poet (for 
at that time there was a city, as w r ell as a court, 
poet), 

*' Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, 
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more," — 

is the finest inversion of immortality concei- 
vable. It is even better than his serious 
apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, the 
triumphant bards of antiquity ! 

The finest burst of severe moral invective 
in all Pope is the prophetical conclusion of 
the epilogue to the Satires : 

" Virtue may chuse the high or low degree, 
*Tis just alike to virtue, and to me; 
Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king, 
She's still the same belov'd, contented thing. 

L 2 



148 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

Vice is undone, if she forgets her birth, 

And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth. 

But 'tis the fall degrades her to a whore : 

Let greatness own her, and she's mean no more. 

Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess. 

Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless ; 

In golden chains the willing world she draws, 

And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws ; 

Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head, 

And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead. 

Lo ! at the wheels of her triumphal car, 

Old England's Genius, rough with many a scar, 

Dragg'd in the dust ! his arms hang idly round, 

His flag inverted trains along the ground ! 

Our youth, all livery'd o'er with foreign gold, 

Before her dance ; behind her crawl the old ! 

See thronging millions to the Pagod run, 

And offer country, parent, wife, or son ! 

Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim 

That not to be corrupted is the shame. 

In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in pow'r, 

'Tis av'rice all, ambition is no more ! 

See all our nobles begging to be slaves ! 

See all our fools aspiring to be knaves ! 

The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore, 

Are what ten thousand envy and adore : 

All, all look up with reverential awe 

At crimes that 'scape or triumph o'er the law ; 

While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry : 

Nothing is sacred now but villany. 

Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain) 

Show there was one who held it in disdain." 

His Satires are not in general so good as 
his Epistles. His enmity is effeminate and 
petulant from a sense of weakness, as his 



ON DRYDEX AXD TOPE. 149 

friendship was tender from a sense of grati- 
tude. I do not like, for instance, his character 
of Chartres, or his characters of women. His 
delicacy often borders upon sickliness ; his 
fastidiousness makes others fastidious. But 
his compliments are divine ; they are equal in 
value to a house or an estate. Take the fol- 
lowing. In addressing Lord Mansfield, he 
speaks of the grave as a scene, 

" Where Murray, long enough his country's pride, 
Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde." 

To Bolingbroke he says — 

" Why rail they then if but one wreath of mine, 
Oh all-accomplished St. John, deck thy shrine?" 

Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord 
Cornbury — 

" Despise low thoughts, low gains : 
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains ; 
Be virtuous and be happy for your pains.*' 

One would think (though there is no knowing) 
that a descendant of this nobleman, if there be 
such a person living, could hardly be guilty of 
a mean or paltry action. 

The finest piece of personal satire in Pope 
(perhaps in the world) is his character of 
Addison ; and this, it may be observed, is of 
a mixed kind, made up of his respect for the 
man, and a cutting sense of his failings. The 



150 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

other finest one is that of Buckingham, and 

the best part of that is the pleasurable. 

" Alas ! how changed from him, 

That life of pleasure and that soul of whim, 
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, 
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love !" 

Among his happiest and most inimitable effu- 
sions are the Epistles to Arbuthnot, and to 
Jervas the painter ; amiable patterns of the 
delightful unconcerned life, blending ease with 
dignity, which poets and painters then led. 
Thus he says to Arbuthnot : 

u Why did I write ? What sin to me unknown 
Dipp'd me in ink, my parents' or my own ? 
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. 
I left no calling for this idle trade, 
No duty broke, no father disobey'd : 
The muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, 
To help me through this long disease, my life ! 
To second, Arbuthnot ! thy art and care, 
And teach the being you preserv'd to bear. 

But why then publish ? Granville the polite, 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
Well-natur'd Garth inflam'd with early praise, 
And Congreve Iov'd, and Swift endur'd, my lays ; 
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read ; 
E'en mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
With open arms received one poet more. 
Happy my studies, when by these approv'd ! 
Happier their author, when by these belov'd ! 
From these the world will judge of men and books, 
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks." 



ON DKYDEN AND POPE. 151 

I cannot help giving also the conclusion of 
the Epistle to Jervas. 

" Oh, lasting as those colours, may they shine, 
Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line ; 
New graces yearlj', like thy works, display, 
Soft, without weakness, without glaring gay ; 
Led by some rule, that guides, but not constrains ; 
And finish'd more through happiness than pains, 
The kindred arts shall in their praise conspire, 
One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre. 
Yet should the Graces all thy figures place, 
And breathe an air divine on ev'ry face; 
Yet should the Muses bid my numbers roll 
Strong as their charms, and gentle as their soul ; 
With Zeuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie, 
And these be sung till Granville's Myra die : 
Alas ! how little from the grave we claim ! 
Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name." 

And shall we cut ourselves off from beauties 
like these with a theory? Shall we shut up our 
books, and seal up our senses, to please the 
dull spite and inordinate vanity of those " who 
have eyes, but they see not — ears, but they 
hear not — and understandings, but they under- 
stand not," — and go about asking our blind 
guides whether Pope was a poet or not ? It 
will never do. Such persons, when you point 
out to them a fine passage in Pope, turn it off 
to something of the same sort in some other 
writer. Thus they say that the line, u I lispM 
in numbers, for the numbers came/' is pretty, 
but taken from that of Ovid — Et quum co- 
nabar scribere, versus erat. They are safe in 



lr>2 ON DIIYDEN AND POPE. 

this mode of criticism : there is no danger of 
any one's tracing their writings to the classics. 

Pope's letters and prose writings neither 
take away from, nor add to, his poetical repu- 
tation. There is, occasionally, a littleness of 
manner, and an unnecessary degree of caution. 
He appears anxious to say a good thing in 
every word, as well as every sentence. They, 
however, give a very favourable idea of his 
moral character in all respects ; and his letters 
to Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do 
equal honour to both. If I had to choose, 
there are one or two persons, and but one or 
two, that I should like to have been, better 
than Pope! 

Drydeii was a better prose-writer, and a 
bolder and more varied versifier, than Pope. 
He was a more vigorous thinker, a more cor- 
rect and logical declaimer, and had more of 
what may be called strength of mind than 
Pope ; but he had not the same refinement 
and delicacy of feeling. Dryden's eloquence 
and spirit were possessed in a higher degree 
by others, and in nearly the same degree by 
Pope himself ; but that by which Pope was 
distinguished was an essence which he alone 
possessed, and of incomparable value on that 
sole account. Dryden's Epistles are excellent, 
but inferior to Pope's, though they appear 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 153 

(particularly the admirable one to Congreve) 
to have been the model on which the latter 
formed his. His Satires are better than 
Pope's. His Absalom and Achitophel is 
superior, both in force of invective and dis- 
crimination of character, to any thing of Pope^s 
in the same way. The character of Achito- 
phel is very fine ; and breathes, if not a 
sincere love for virtue, a strong spirit of 
indignation against vice. 

Mac Flecknoe is the origin of the idea of 
theDunciad; but it is less elaborately con- 
structed, less feeble, and less heavy. The 
difference between Pope's satirical portraits 
and Dryden's appears to be this, in a good 
measure, that Dryden seems to grapple with 
his antagonists, and to describe real persons ; 
Pope seems to refine upon them in his own 
mind, and to make them out just what he 
pleases, till they are not real characters, but 
the mere driveling effusions of his spleen and 
malice. Pope describes the thing, and then 
goes on describing his own description till he 
loses himself in veibal repetitions. Dryden 
recurs to the object often, takes fresh sittings 
of nature, and gives us new strokes of character 
as well as of his pencil. The Hind and 
Panther is an allegory as well as a satire ; and 
so far it tells less home ; the battery is not so 



154 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

point-blank. But otherwise it has more genius, 
vehemence, and strength of description, than 
any other of Dryden's works, not excepting 
the Absalom and Achitophel. It also contains 
the finest examples of varied and sounding 
versification. I will quote the following as an 
instance of what I mean. He is complaining 
of the treatment which the Papists, under 
James II., received from the church of 
England. 

" Besides these jolly birds, whose corpse impure 
Repaid their commons with their salt manure, 
Another farm he had behind his house, 
Not overstocked, but barely for his use ; 
Wherein his poor domestic poultry fed, 
And from his pious hand " received their bread." 
Our pampered pigeons, with malignant eyes, 
Beheld these inmates and their nurseries \ 
Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn, 
(A cruise of water, and an ear of corn,) 
Yet still they grudged that modicum^ and thought 
A sheaf in every single grain was brought. 
Fain would they filch that little food away, 
While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey ; 
And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall, 
The bird that warned St. Peter of his fall ; 
That he should raise his mitred crest on high, 
And clap his wings, and call his family 
To sacred rites ; and vex the ethereal powers 
With midnight matins at uncivil hours ; 
Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest 
Just in the sweetness of their morning rest. 
Beast of a bird ! supinely when he might 
Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light ! 



ON DRYDEX AND POPE. 155 

What if his dull forefathers us'd that cry, 

Could he not let a bad example die ? 

The world was fallen into an easier way : 

This age knew better than to fast and pray. 

Good sense in sacred worship would appear, 

So to begin as they might end the year. 

Such feats in former times had wrought the falls 

Of crowing chanticleers in cloister'd walls. 

ExpelTd for this, and for their lands, they fled; 

And sister Partlet with her hooded head 

Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed.' ; 

There is a magnanimity of abuse in some of 
these epithets, a fearless choice of topics of 
invective, which may be considered as the 
heroical in satire. 

The Annus Mirabilis is a tedious perform- 
ance ; it is a tissue of far-fetched, heavy, 
lumbering conceits, and in the worst style of 
what has been denominated metaphysical 
poetry. His Odes in general are of the same 
stamp ; they are the hard-strained offspring of 
a meagre, meretricious fancy. The famous 
Ode on St. Cecilia deserves its reputation ; 
for, as a piece of poetical mechanism to be set 
to music, or recited in alternate strophe and 
antistrophe, with classical allusions, and flow- 
ing verse, nothing can be better. It is equally 
fit to be said or sung ; it is not equally good 
to read. It is lyrical, without being epic or 
dramatic. For instance, the description of 
Bacchus, 



156 ON DRVJDEN AND POPE 

" The jolly god in triumph comes, 
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums ; 
FlusJi'd with a purple grace, 
He shows his honest face," — 

does not answer, as it ought, to our idea of 
the god, returning from the conquest of India, 
with satyrs and wild beasts, that he had tamed, 
following iu his train ; crowned with vine 
leaves, and riding in a chariot drawn by leo- 
pards — such as we have seen him painted by 
Titian or Rubens ! Lyrical poetry, of all 
others, bears the nearest resemblance to paint- 
ing : it deals in hieroglyphics and passing 
figures, which depend for effect, not on the 
working out 3 but on the selection. It is the 
dance and pantomime of poetry. In variety 
and rapidity of movement, the Alexander's 
Feast has all that can be required in this 
respect ; it only wants loftiness and truth of 
character. 

Dryden's plays are better than Pope could 
have written ; for though he does not go out 
of himself by the force of imagination, he goes 
out of himself by the force of common-places 
and rhetorical dialogue. On the other hand, 
they are not so good as Shakspeare's ; but he 

I has left the best character of Shakspeare that 

\ has ever been written. # 

* " To begin, then, with Shakspeare : he was the man who 
of- all modern, and perhaps ancient, poets had the largest 



OX DRYDEX AND POPE. 157 

His alterations from Chaucer and Boc- 
caccio show a greater knowledge of the taste 
of his readers, and power of pleasing them, 
than acquaintance with the genius of his au- 
thors. He ekes out the lameness of the verse 
in the former, and breaks the force of the 
passion in both. The Tancred and Sigis- 
munda is the only general exception, in which, 
I think, he has fully retained, if not improved 
upon, the impassioned declamation of the 
original. The Honoria has none of the be- 
wildered, dreary, preternatural effect of Boc- 
caccio's story. Nor has the Flower and the 
Leaf any thing of the enchanting simplicity 
and concentrated feeling of Chaucer's romantic 



and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature 
were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, 
but luckily : when he describes any thing, you more than 
see it. you feel it, too. Those who accuse him to have 
wanted learning give him the greater commendation : he 
was naturally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of 
books to read nature ; he looked inwards and found her 
there. I cannot say he is every where alike •, were he so, 
I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of 
mankind. He is many times flat and insipid : his comic 
wit degenerating into clenches, his serious, swelling into 
bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion 
is presented to him. No man can say he ever had a fit 
subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high 
above the rest of poets, 

Quantum lenta solent inter Viburna CupressL" 



158 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

fiction. Dryden, however, sometimes seemed 
to indulge himself as well as his readers, as in 
keeping entire that noble line in Palamon's 
address to Venus : 

" Thou gladder of the mount of Cithseron ! " 

His Tales have been, upon the whole, the 
most popular of his works ; and I should 
think that a translation of some of the other 
serious tales in Boccaccio and Chaucer, as 
that of Isabella, the Falcon, of Constance, 
the Prioress's Tale, and others, if executed 
with taste and spirit, could not fail to succeed 
in the present day. 

It should appear, in tracing the history of 
our literature, that poetry had, at the period 
of which we are speaking, in general declined, 
by successive gradations, from the poetry of 
imagination, in the time of Elizabeth, to the 
poetry of fancy (to adopt a modern distinction) 
in the time of Charles I. ; and again from the 
poetry of fancy to that of wit, as in the reign 
of Charles II. and Queen Anne. It degene- 
rated into the poetry of mere common places, 
both in style and thought, in the succeeding 
reigns : as in the latter part of the last century, 
it was transformed, by means of the French 
Revolution, into the poetry of paradox. 

Of Donne I know r nothing but some been- 



ON URYDEN AND POPE. 159 

tiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from 
accompanying him on his travels abroad, and 
some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx 
could not unravel. 

Waller still lives in the name of Sacharissa; 
and his lines on the death of Oliver Cromwell 
show that he was a man not without genius 
and strength of thought. 

Marvel is a writer of nearly the same period, 
and worthy of a better age. Some of his 
verses are harsh as the words of Mercury ; 
others musical as is Apollo's lute. Of the 
latter kind are his boat-song, his description 
of a fawn, and his lines to Lady Vere. His 
lines prefixed to Paradise Lost are by no 
means the most favourable specimen of his 
powers. 

Butler's Hudibras is a poem of more wit 
than any other in the language. The rhymes 
have as much genius in them as the thoughts; 
but there is no story in it, and but little hu- 
mour. Humour is the making others act or 
talk absurdly and unconsciously : wit is the 
pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity 
consciously, and with more or less ill-nature. 
The fault of Butler's poem is not that it has 
too much wit, but that it has not an equal 
quantity of other things. One would suppose 
that the starched manners and sanctified gri- 



]60 



OX DRYDEN AND POPE. 



mace of the times in which he lived would of 
themselves have been sufficiently rich in ludi- 
crous incidents and characters ; but they seem 
rather to have irritated his spleen than to have 
drawn forth his powers of picturesque imita- 
tion. Certainly, if we compare Hudibras with 
Don Quixote in this respect, it seems rather 
a meagre and unsatisfactory performance. 

Rochester's poetry is the poetry of wit com- 
bined with the love of pleasure, of thought 
with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless 
levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in 
it ; his contempt for every thing that others 
respect almost amounts to sublimity. His 
poem upon Nothing is itself no trifling work. 
His epigrams were the bitterest, the least 
laboured, and the truest, that ever were 
written. 

Sir John Suckling was of the same mer- 
curial stamp, but with a greater fund of animal 
spirits ; as witty, but less malicious. His 
Ballad on a Wedding is perfect in its kind, 
and has a spirit of high enjoyment in it, of 
sportive fancy, a liveliness of description, and 
a truth of nature, that never were surpassed. 
It is superior to either Gay or Prior ; for 
with all their naivete and terseness, it has a 
Shakspearian grace and luxuriance about it 
which they could not have reached. 



ON DKYDEX AND POPE. l6l 

Denham and Cowley belong to the same 
period, but were quite distinct from each 
other : the one was grave and prosing, the 
other melancholy and fantastical. There are 
a number of good lines and good thoughts in 
the " Coopers Hill." And in Cowley there is 
an inexhaustible fund of sense and ingenuity, 
buried in inextricable conceits, and entangled 
in the cobwebs of the schools. He was a 
great man, not a great poet. But I shall say 
no more on this subject. I never wish to 
meddle with names that are sacred, unless 
when they stand in the way of things that are 
more sacred. 

Withers is a name now almost forgotten, 
and his works seldom read ; but his poetry is 
not unfrequently distinguished by a tender and 
pastoral turn of thought ; and there is one 
passage of exquisite feeling, describing the 
consolations of poetry in the following terms : 

" She doth tell me where to borrow 
Comfort in the midst of sorrow ; 
Makes the desolatest place * 
To her presence be a grace 5 
And the blackest discontents 
Be her fairest ornaments, 
In my former days of bliss 
Her divine skill taught me this, 

* Written in the Fleet Prison. 
M 



162 ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 

That from every thing I saw 

I could some invention draw ; 

And raise pleasure to her height, 

Through the meanest object's sight ; — 

By the murmur of a spring, 

Or the least bough's rusteling, 

By a daisy whose leaves spread 

Shut when Titan goes to bed \ 

Or a shady bush or tree, 

She could more infuse in me 

Than all Nature's beauties can 

In. some other wiser man. 

By her help I also now 

Make this churlish place allow 

Some things that may sweeten gladness 

In the very gall of sadness. 

The dull loneness, the black shade, 

That these hanging vaults have made, 

The strange music of the waves, 

Beating on these hollow caves, 

This black den which rocks emboss, 

Overgrown with eldest moss, 

The rude portals that give light 

More to terror than delight, 

This my chamber of neglect, 

Wall'd about with disrespect, 

From all these and this dull air, 

A fit object for despair, 

She hath taught me by her might 

To draw comfort and delight. 

Therefore, thou best earlhly bliss, 

I will cherish thee for this. 

Poesie, thou sweet'st content 

That e'er Heaven to mortals lent, 

Though they as a trifle leave thee, 

Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee, 

Though thou be to them a scorn, 

That to nought but earth are born, 



ON DRYDEN AND POPE. 163 

Let my life no longer be 

Than I am in love with thee. 

Though our wise ones call thee madness, 

Let me never taste of sadness 

If I love not thy maddest fits 

Above all their greatest wits. 

And though some too seeming holy 

Do account thy raptures folly, 

Thou dost teach me to contemn 

What makes knaves and fools of them." 



M 2 



LECTURE V. 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

Thomson, the kind - hearted Thomson, was 
the most indolent of mortals and of poets. 
But he was also one of the best both of mor- 
tals and of poets. Dr. Johnson makes it his 
praise that he wrote " no line which dying he 
would wish to blot." Perhaps a better proof 
of his honest simplicity, and inoffensive good- 
ness of disposition, would be that he wrote no 
line which any other person living would wish 
that he should blot. Indeed, he himself 
wished, on his death-bed, formally to expunge 
his dedication of one of the Seasons to that 
finished courtier, and candid biographer of his 
own life, Bubb Doddington. As critics, how- 
ever, not as moralists, we might say, on the 
other hand — "Would he had blotted a thou- 
sand !" The same suavity of temper and 



ON THOMSON AND COWPKR. 165 

sanguine warmth of feeling which threw such 
a naturaL grace and genial spirit of enthusiasm 
over his poetry was also the cause of his in- 
herent vices and defects. He is affected 
through carelessness : pompous from unsus- 
pecti ng simplicity of character. He is fre- 
quently pedantic and ostentatious in his style, 
because he had no consciousness of these 
v'ices in himself. He mounts upon stilts, not 
out of vanity, but indolence. He seldom 
writes a good line but he makes up for it by 
a bad one. He takes advantage of all the 
most trite and mechanical common-places of 
imagery and diction as a kindly relief to his 
Muse, and as if he thought them quite as 
good, and likely to be quite as acceptable to 
the reader, as his own poetry. He did not 
think the difference worth putting himself to 
the trouble of accomplishing. He had too 
little art to conceal his art : or did not even 
seem to know that there was any occasion for 
it. His art is as naked and undisguised as his 
nature ; the one is as pure and genuine as the 
other is gross, gaudy, and meretricious. All 
that is admirable in the Seasons is the ema- 
nation of a fine natural genius, and sincere 
love of his subject, unforced, unstudied, that 
comes uncalled for, and departs unbidden. 
But he takes no pains, uses no self-correction; 



166 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

or if he seems to labour, it is worse than 
labour lost. His genius " cannot be con- 
strained by mastery/' The feeling of nature, 
of the changes of the seasons, was in his mind ; 
and he could not help conveying this feeling to 
the reader, by the mere force of spontaneous 
expression; but if the expression did not come 
of itself, he left the whole business to chance ; 
or, willing to evade, instead of encountering 
the difficulties of his subject, fills up the inter- 
vals of true inspiration with the most vapid 
and worthless materials, pieces out a beau- 
tiful half line with a bombastic allusion, or 
overloads an exquisitely natural sentiment or 
image with a cloud of painted, pompous, 
cumbrous phrases, like the shower of roses, 
in which he represents the Spring, his own 
lovely, fresh, and innocent Spring, as descend- 
ing to the earth : 

w Come, gentle Spring ! ethereal Mildness ! come, 
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, 
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower 
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend." 

Who, from such a flimsy, round-about, un- 
meaning commencement as this, would expect 
the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt de- 
scriptions of natural scenery, which are scat- 
tered in such unconscious profusion through 
this and the following cantos ! For instance, 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 167 

the very next passage is crowded with a set of 
striking images. 

(i And see where surly Winter passes off 
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts : 
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill, 
The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale ; 
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch 
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost, 
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky. 
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed, 
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze-, 
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets 
Deform the day delightless ; so that scarce 
The bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht 
To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore 
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath, 
And sing their wild notes to the list'ning waste." 

Thomson is the best of our descriptive 
poets ; for he gives most of the poetry of 
natural description. Others have been quite 
equal to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper 
for instance, in the picturesque part of his art, 
in marking the peculiar features and curious 
details of objects ; — no one has yet come up 
to him in giving the sum total of their effects, 
their varying influences on the mind. He 
does not go into the minutice of a landscape, 
but describes the vivid impression which the 
whole makes upon his own imagination ; and 
thus transfers the same unbroken, unimpaired 
impression to the imagination of his readers. 



168 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 



The colours with which he paints seem yet 
wet and breathing, like those of the living- 
statue in the Winter's Tale. Nature in his 
descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh 
and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of 
the atmosphere, its humidity or clearness, its 
heat or cold, the glow of summer, the gloom 
of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the 
full overshadowing foliage, the declining pomp 
and deepening tints of autumn. He trans- 
ports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, 
or plunges us into the chilling horrors and 
desolation of the frozen zone. We hear the 
snow drifting against the broken casement 
without, and see the fire blazing on the hearth 
within. The first scattered drops of a vernal 
shower patter on the leaves above our heads, 
or the coming storm resounds through the 
leafless groves. In a word, he describes not 
to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and 
to the whole man. He puts his heart into his 
subject, writes as he feels, and humanises 
whatever he touches. He makes all his de- 
scriptions teem with life and vivifying soul. 
His faults were those of his style — of the 
author and the man ; but the original genius 
of the poet, the pith and marrow of his ima- 
gination, the fine natural mould in which his 
feelings were bedded, were too much for him 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 169 

to counteract by neglect, or affectation, or 
false ornaments. It is for this reason that he 
is, perhaps, the most popular of all our poets, 
treating of a subject that all can understand, 
and in a way that is interesting to all alike, to 
the ignorant or the refined, because he gives 
back the impression which the things them- 
selves make upon us in nature. " That," said 
a man of genius, seeing a little shabby soiled 
copy of Thomson's Seasons lying on the 
window-seat of an obscure country alehouse 
— " That is true fame ! v 

It has been supposed by some that the 
Castle of Indolence is Thomson's best poem; 
but that is not the case. He has in it, indeed, 
poured out the whole soul of indolence, dif- 
fuse, relaxed, supine, dissolved into a volup- 
tuous dream ; and surrounded himself with a 
set of objects and companions in entire unison 
with the listlessness of his own temper. No- 
thing can well go beyond the descriptions of 
these inmates of the place, and their luxurious 
pampered way of life — of him who came 
among them like " a burnished fly in month 
of June," but soon left them on his heedless 
-way ; and him, 

" For whom the merry bells had rung, I ween, 
If in this nook of quiet bells had ever been." 

The in-door quiet and cushioned ease, where 



170 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

" all was one full-swelling bed ;" the out-of- 
door stillness, broken only by " the stock-dove's 
plaint amid the forest deep, 

" That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale," — 

are in the most perfect and delightful keeping. 
But still there are no passages in this exquisite 
little production of sportive ease and fancy, 
equal to the best of those in the Seasons. 
Warton, in his Essay on Pope, was the first 
to point out and do justice to some of these ; 
for instance, to the description of the effects 
of the contagion among our ships at Cartha- 
gena — " of the frequent corse heard nightly 
plunged amid the sullen waves," and to the 
description of the pilgrims lost in the deserts 
of Arabia. This last passage, profound and 
striking as it is, is not free from those faults 
of style which I have already noticed : 

" Breath'd hot 



From all the boundless furnace of the sky, 
And the wide-glitt'ring waste of burning sand, 
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites 
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, 
Son of the desert, ev'n the camel feels 
Shot through his wither'd heart the fiery blast. 
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad, 
Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands, 
Commov'd around, in gath'ring eddies play ; 
Nearer and nearer still they dark'ning come, 
Till with the gen'ral all-involving storm 
Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise, 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 171 

And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown, 

Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep, 

Beneath descending hills the caravan 

Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets, 

Th' impatient merchant, wond'ring, waits in vain ; 

And Mecca saddens at the long delay." 

There are other passages of equal beauty 
with these ; such as that of the hunted stag ? 
followed by u the inhuman rout/ 5 

" That from the shady depth 

Expel him, circling through his ev'ry shift. 
He sweeps the forest oft, and, sobbing, sees 
The glades mild op'ning to the golden day, 
"Where in kind contest with his butting friends 
He wont to struggle, or his loves enjoy." 

The whole of the description of the frozen 
zone, in the Winter, is perhaps even finer and 
more thoroughly felt, as being done from early 
associations, than that of the torrid zone in his 
Summer. Any thing more beautiful than the 
following account of the Siberian exiles is, I 
think, hardly to be found in the whole range 
of poetry. 

" There through the prison of unbounded wilds, 
Barr'd by the hand of nature from escape, 
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around 
Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow, 
And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods, 
That stretch athwart the solitary vast 
Their icy horrors to the frozen main ; 
And cheerless towns far distant, never bless'd, 
Save when its annual course the caravan 
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay, 
With news of human kind/' 



172 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

The feeling of loneliness, of distance, of 
lingering, slow-revolving years of pining ex- 
pectation, of desolation within and without 
the heart, was never more finely expressed 
than it is here. 

The account which follows of the employ- 
ments of the Polar night — of the journeys of 
the natives by moonlight, drawn by rein-deer, 
and of the return of spring in Lapland — 

" Where pure Niemi's fairy mountains rise, 

And fring'd with roses Tenglio rolls his stream," 

is equally picturesque and striking in a differ- 
ent May. The traveller lost hi the snow, is a 
well known and admirable dramatic episode. 
I prefer, however, giving one example of our 
author's skill in painting common domestic 
scenery, as it will bear a more immediate 
comparison with the style of some later writers 
on such subjects. It is of little consequence 
what passage we take. The following descrip- 
tion of the first setting in of winter is, perhaps 
as pleasing as any: 

li Through the hush'd air the whitening shower descends, 
At first thin wav'ring, till at last the flakes 
Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day 
With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields 
Put on their winter- robe of purest white : 
5 Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts 
Along the mazy current. Low the woods 
Bow their hoar head ; and ere the languid Sun, 



OX THOMSON AND COWPER. 1/3 

Faint, from the West emits his ev'ning ray, 
Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill, 
Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide 
The works of man. Drooping, the lab'rer-ox 
Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands 
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav'n, 
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around 
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon 
Which Providence assigns them. One alone, 
The red-breast, sacred to the household Gods, 
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, 
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves 
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man 
His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first 
Against the window beats ; then, brisk, alights 
On the warm hearth ; then hopping o'er the floor, 
Eyes all the smiling family askance, 
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is : 
Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs 
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds 
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, 
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset 
By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, 
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, 
Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind 
Eye the bleak heav'n, and next the glist'ning earth, 
With looks of dumb despair ; then, sad dispers'd, 
Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow.' 3 

It is thus that Thomson always give a moral 
sense to nature. 

Thomson's blank verse is not harsh, nor 
utterly untuneable ; but it is heavy and 
monotonous ; it seems always labouring up- 
hill. The selections which have been made 
from his works in Enfield's Speaker, and 



174 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

other books of extracts, do not convey the 
most favourable idea of his genius or taste ; 
such as Palemon and Lavinia, Damon and 
Musidora, Celadon and Amelia. Those parts 
of any author which are most liable to be 
stitched in worsted, and framed and glazed, are 
not by any means always the best. The moral 
descriptions and reflections in the Seasons are 
in an admirable spirit, and written with great 
force and fervour. 

His poem on Liberty is not equally good : 
his Muse was too easy and good-natured for 
the subject, which required as much indigna- 
tion against unjust and arbitrary power, as 
complacency in the constitutional monarchy, 
under which, just after the expulsion of the 
Stuarts and the establishment of the House 
of Hanover, in contempt of the claims of 
hereditary pretenders to the throne, Thomson 
lived. Thomson was but an indifferent hater; 
and the most indispensable part of the love 
of liberty has unfortunately hitherto been 
the hatred of tyranny. Spleen is the soul 
of patriotism, and of public good : but you 
would not expect a man who has been seen 
eating peaches off a tree with both hands in 
his waistcoat pockets, to be " overrun with 
the spleen," or to heat himself needlessly about 
an abstract proposition. 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 175 

His plays are liable to the same objection. 
They are never acted, and seldom read. The 
author could not, or would not, put himself 
out of his way, to enter into the situations and 
passions of others, particularly of a tragic 
kind. The subject of Tancred and Sigis- 
munda, which is taken from a serious episode 
in Gil Bias, is an admirable one, but poorly 
handled : the ground may be considered as 
still unoccupied. 

Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this con- 
nection, lived at a considerable distance of time 
after Thomson ; and had some advantages 
over him, particularly in simplicity of style, 
in a certain precision and minuteness of 
graphical description, and in a more careful 
and leisurely choice of such topics only as his 
genius and peculiar habits of mind prompted 
him to treat of. The Task has fewer blemishes 
than the Seasons ; but it has not the same 
capital excellence, the " unbought grace'* of 
poetry, the power of moving and infusing the 
warmth of the authors mind into that of the 
reader. If Cowper had a more polished 
taste, Thomson had, beyond comparison, a 
more fertile genius, more impulsive force, a 
more entire forgetfulness of himself in his 
subject. If in Thomson you are sometimes 
offended with the slovenliness of the author 



17*> ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

by profession, determined to get through his 
task at all events ; in Cowper you are no less 
dissatisfied with the finicalness of the private 
gentleman, who does not care whether he 
completes his work or not; and, in whatevei 
he does, is evidently more solicitous to 
please himself than the public. There is an 
effeminacy about him, which shrinks from 
and repels common and hearty sympathy. 
With all his boasted simplicity and love of the 
country, he seldom launches out into general 
descriptions of nature : he looks at her over 
his clipped hedges, and from his well-swept 
garden-walks ; or if he makes a bolder ex- 
periment now and then, it is with an air of 
precaution, as if he were afraid of being 
caught in a shower of rain, or of not being 
able, in case of any untoward accident, to 
make good his retreat home. He shakes 
hands with nature with a pair of fashionable 
gloves on, and leads " his Vashti ?> forth to 
public view with a look of consciousness and 
attention to etiquette, as a fine gentleman 
hands a lady out to dance a minuet. He is 
delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, 
after a romantic adventure with crazy Kate, a 
party of gypsies or a little child on a common, 
to the drawing-room and the ladies again, to 
the sofa and the tea-kettle — No, I beg his 



OX THOMSON AND COWPER. 1/7 

pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured tea- 
kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing 
urn. His walks and arbours are kept clear of 
worms and snails, with as much an appearance 
of petit-maitreship as of humanity. He has 
some of the sickly sensibility and pampered 
refinements of Pope ; but then Pope prided 
himself in them : whereas, Cowper affects to 
be all simplicity and plainness. He had nei- 
ther Thomson's love of the unadorned beauties 
of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the 
elegances of art. He was, in fact, a nervous 
man, afraid of trusting himself to the se- 
ductions of the one, and ashamed of putting 
forward his pretensions to an intimacy with 
the other : but to be a coward is not the way 
to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love ! 
Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all his 
reputation. His worst vices are amiable 
weaknesses, elegant trifling. Though there is 
a frequent dryness, timidity, and jejuneness in 
his manner, he has left a number of pictures 
of domestic comfort and social refinement^ as 
well as of natural imagery and feeling, which 
can hardly be forgotten but with the language 
itself. Such, among others, are his memora- 
ble description of the post coming in, that of 
the preparations for tea in a winter's evening 
in the country, of the unexpected fall of snow, 

N 



178 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

of the frosty morning (with the fine satirical 
transition to the Empress of Russia's palace 
of ice), and, most of all, the winter's walk at 
noon. Every one of these may be considered 
as distinct studies, or highly-finished cabinet- 
pieces arranged without order or coherence. I 
shall be excused for giving the last of them, 
as what has always appeared to me one of the 
most feeling, elegant, and perfect specimens 
of this writer's manner. 

" The night was winter in his roughest mood ; 
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon 
Upon the southern side of the slant hills, 
And where the woods fence off the northern blast, 
The season smiles, resigning all its rage, 
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue, 
Without a cloud, and white without a speck 
The dazzling splendour of the scene below. 
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale; 
And through the trees I view th' embattled tow'r, 
Whence all the music. I again perceive 
The soothing influence of the wafted strains, 
And settle in soft musings as I tread 
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, 
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. 
The roof, though moveable through all its length, 
As the wind sways it, has yet well suffic'd, 
And, intercepting in their silent fall 
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. 
No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 
The redbreast warbles still, but is content 
With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd. 
Pleas'd with his solitude, and flitting light 
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes 



ON THOMSON AND COWPEK. 1?9 

From many a twig the pendent drops of ice 

That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. 

Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, 

Charms more than silence. Meditation here 

May think down hours to moments. Here the heart 

May give a useful lesson to the head, 

And Learning wiser grow without his books. 

Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one, 

Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells 

In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; 

Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 

Books are not seldom talismans and spells, 

By which the magic art of shrewder wits 

Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall'd. 

Some to the fascination of a name 

Surrender judgment hood-wink'd. Some the style 

Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds 

Of error leads them, by a tune entranc'd. 

While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear 

The insupportable fatigue of thought, 

And swallowing therefore, without pause or choice, 

The total grist unsifted, husks and all. 

But trees, and rivulets whose rapid course 

Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, 

And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, 

And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time 

Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, 

Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth, 

Not shy, as in the world, and to be "won 

By slow solicitation, seize at once 

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.'' 

His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and 
forcible, with the polished manners of the 
gentleman, and the honest indignation of the 
virtuous man. His religious poetry, except 
where it takes a tincture of controversial heat, 

N 2 



1.80 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not 
a seraph's wing. I might refer, in illustration 
of this opinion, to the laboured anticipation of 
the Millennium at the end of the sixth book. 
He could describe a piece of shell-work as 
well as any modern poet : but he could not 
describe the New Jerusalem so well as John 
Bunyan ; — nor are his verses on Alexander 
Selkirk so good as Robinson Crusoe. The 
one is not so much like a vision, nor is the 
other so much like the reality. 

The first volume of Cowper's poems has, 
however, been less read than it deserved. 
The comparison in these poems of the proud 
and humble believer to the peacock and the 
pheasant, and the parallel between Voltaire 
and the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of 
eloquence and poetry, particularly the last : 

" Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door, 
Pillow and bobbins all her little store ; 
Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, 
Shuffling her threads about the live-long day, 
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night, 
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light ; 
She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, 
Has little understanding, and no wit, 
Receives no praise •, but, though her lot be such, 
(Toilsome and indigent) she renders much ; 
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true — 
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew ; 
And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes 
Her title to a treasure in the skies. 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 181 

O happy peasant ! Oh unhappy bard ! 
His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward ; 
He prais'd, perhaps, for ages yet to come, 
She never heard of half a mile from home : 
He lost in errors his vain heart prefers, 
She safe in the simplicity of hers.'' 

His character of Whitfield, in the poem on 
Hope, is one of the most spirited and striking 
things. It is written con amove. 

" But if, unblameable in word and thought, 
A man arise, a man whom God has taught, 
With all Elijah's dignity of tone, 
And all the love of the beloved John, 
To storm the citadels they build in air, 
To smite the untemper'd wall ('tis death to spare), 
To sweep away all refuges of lies, 
And place, instead of quirks themselves devise, 
Lama Sabachthani before their eyes ; 
To show that without Christ all gain is loss, 
All hope despair that stands not on his cross ; 
Except a few his God may have impress'd, 
A tenfold phrensy seizes all the rest. v ' 

These lines were quoted, soon after their ap- 
pearance, by the Monthly Reviewers, to show 
that Cowper was no poet, though they after- 
wards took credit to themselves for having 
been the first to introduce his verses to the 
notice of the public. It is not a little remark- 
able that these same critics regularly damned, 
at its first coming out, every work which has 
since acquired a standard reputation with the 
public. Cowper's verses on his mother's 



182 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

picture, and his lines to Mary, are some of 
the most pathetic that ever were written. His 
stanzas on the loss of the Royal George have 
a masculine strength and feeling beyond what 
was usual with him. The story of John 
Gilpin has perhaps given as much pleasure to 
as many people as any thing of the same 
length that ever was written. 

His life was an unhappy one. It was em- 
bittered by a morbid affection, and by his 
religious sentiments. Nor are we to w 7 onder 
at this, or bring it as a charge against religion; 
for it is the nature of the poetical tempera- 
ment to carry every thing to excess, whether 
it be love, religion, pleasure, or pain, as we 
may see in the case of Cowper and of Burns, 
and to find torment or rapture in that in which 
others merely find a resource from ennui, or 
a relaxation from common occupation. 

There are two poets still living who belong 
to the same class of excellence, and of whom 
I shall here say a few words; I mean Crabbe, 
and Robert Bloomfield, the author of the 
Farmer's Boy. As a painter of simple natural 
scenery, and of the still life of the country, 
few writers have more undeniable and unas- 
suming pretensions than the ingenious and 
self-taught poet last mentioned. Among the 
sketches of this sort I would mention, as 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 183 

equally distinguished for delicacy, faithfulness, 
and naivete, his description of lambs racing, 
of the pigs going out an acorning, of the boy 
sent to feed his sheep before the break of day 
in winter ; and I might add the innocently 
told story of the poor bird-boy, who in vain 
through the live-long day expects his promised 
companions at his hut, to share his feast oi 
roasted sloes with him, as an example of that 
humble pathos in which this author excels. 
The fault indeed of his genius is that it is too 
humble : his Muse has something not only 
rustic, but menial in her aspect. He seems 
afraid of elevating nature, lest she should be 
ashamed of him. Bloomfield very beautifully 
describes the lambs in spring-time as racing 
round the hillocks of green turf : Thomson, 
in describing the same image, makes the 
mound of earth the remains of an old Roman 
encampment. Bloomfield never gets beyond 
his own experience ; and that is somewhat 
confined. He gives the simple appearance of 
nature, but he gives it naked, shivering, and 
unclothed with the drapery of a moral imagi- 
nation. His poetry has much the effect of 
the first approach of spring, " while yet the 
year is unconfirmed, 5 ' where a few tender buds 
venture forth here and there, but are chilled 
by the early frosts and nipping breath of 



]84 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

poverty. It should seem from this and other 
instances that have occurred within the last 
century, that we cannot expect from original 
genius alone, without education, in modern 
and more artificial periods, the same bold 
and independent results as in former periods. 
And one reason appears to be that, though 
such persons, from whom we might at first 
expect a restoration of the good old times of 
poetry, are not encumbered and enfeebled by 
the trammels of custom, and the dull weight 
of other men's ideas ; yet they are oppressed 
by the consciousness of a want of the common 
advantages which others have ; are looking at 
the tinsel finery of the age, while they neglect 
the rich unexplored mine in their own breasts; 
and, instead of setting an example for the 
world to follow, spend their lives in aping, or 
in the despair of aping, the hackneyed accom- 
plishments of their inferiors. Another cause 
may be, that original genius alone is not suffi- 
cient to produce the highest excellence, without 
a corresponding state of manners, passions, 
and religious belief : that no single mind can 
move in direct opposition to the vast machine 
of the world around it ; that the poet can do 
no more than stamp the mind of his age upon 
his works ; and that all that the ambition of 
the highest genius can hope to arrive at, after 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 185 

the lapse of one or two generations, is the 
perfection of that more refined and effeminate 
style of studied elegance and adventitious 
ornament, which is the result, not of nature, 
but of art. In fact, no other style of poetry 
has succeeded, or seems likely to succeed, in 
the present day. The public taste hangs like 
a millstone round the neck of all original 
genius that does not conform to established 
and exclusive models. The writer is not only 
without popular sympathy, but without a rich 
and varied mass of materials for his mind to 
work upon and assimilate unconsciously to it- 
self; his attempts at originality are looked upon 
as affectation, and in the end degenerate into it 
from the natural spirit of contradiction, and the 
constant uneasy sense of disappointment and 
undeserved ridicule. But to return. 

Crabbe is, if not the most natural, the most 
literal of our descriptive poets. He exhibits 
the smallest circumstances of the smallest 
things. He gives the very costume of mean- 
ness ; the non-essentials of every trifling inci- 
dent. He is his own landscape-painter, and 
engraver too. His pastoral scenes seem pricked 
on paper in little dotted lines. He describes 
the interior of a cottage like a person sent 
there to distrain for rent. He has an eye to 
the number of arms in an old worm-eaten 



186 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

chair, and takes care to inform himself and 
the reader whether a joint-stool stands upon 
three legs or upon four. If a settle by the 
fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much 
disturbance as a tottering world ; and he 
records the rent in a ragged counterpane as an 
event in history. He is equally curious in his 
back-grounds and in his figures. You know 
the christian and surnames of every one of his 
heroes, — the dates of their achievements, 
whether on a Sunday or a Monday, — their 
place of birth and burial, the colour of their 
clothes, and of their hair, and whether they 
squinted or not. He takes an inventory of 
the human heart exactly in the same manner 
as of the furniture of a sick room : his senti- 
ments have very much the air of fixtures : he 
gives you the petrifaction of a sigh, and 
carves a tear, to the life, in stone. Almost 
all his characters are tired of their lives, and 
you heartily wish them dead. They remind 
one of anatomical preservations ; or may be 
said to bear the same relation to actual life 
that a stuffed cat in a glass-case does to the 
real one purring on the hearth : the skin is 
the same, but the life and the sense of heat is 
gone. Crabbe's poetry is like a museum, or 
curiosity-shop : every thing has the same post- 
humous appearance, the same inanimateness 



OX THOMSON AND COWPER. 187 

and identity of character. If Bioomfield is 
too much of the Farmer's Boy, Crabbe is too 
much of the parish beadle, an overseer of the 
country poor. He has no delight beyond the 
walls of a workhouse, and his officious zeal 
would convert the world into a vast infirmary, 
He is a kind of Ordinary, not of Newgate, 
but of nature. His poetical morality is taken 
from Burn's Justice, or the Statutes against 
Vagrants. He sets his own imagination in 
the stocks, and his Muse, like Malvolio, 
" wears cruel garters." He collects all the 
petty vices of the human hearty and superin- 
tends, as in a panopticon, a select circle of 
rural malefactors. He makes out the poor 
to be as bad as the rich — a sort of vermin 
for the others to hunt down and trample upon, 
and this he thinks a good piece of work. 
With him there are but two moral categories, 
riches and poverty, authority and dependence. 
His parish apprentice, Richard Monday, and 
his wealthy baronet, Sir Richard Monday, of 
Monday-place, are the same individual — the 
extremes of the same character, and of his 
whole system. " The latter end of his Com- 
monwealth does not forget the beginning. 5 ' 
But his parish ethics are the very worst model 
for a state : any thing more degrading and 
helpless cannot well be imagined. He exhibits 



188 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

just the contrary view of human life to that 
which Gay has done in his Beggars Opera. 
In a word, Crabbe is the only poet who has 
attempted and succeeded in the still life of 
tragedy : who gives the stagnation of hope 
and fear — the deformity of vice without the 
temptation — the pain of sympathy without the 
interest — and who seems to rely, for the de- 
light he is to convey to his reader, on the 
truth and accuracy with which he describes 
only what is disagreeable. 

The best descriptive poetry is not, after all, 
to be found in our descriptive poets. There 
are set descriptions of the flowers, for instance, 
in Thomson, Cowper, and others ; but none 
equal to those in Milton's Lycidas, and in the 
Winter's Tale. 

We have few good pastorals in the lan- 
uage. Our manners are not Arcadian ; our 
climate is not an eternal spring ; our age is 
not the age of gold. We have no pastoral- 
writers equal to Theocritus, nor any land- 
scapes like those of Claude Lorraine. The 
best parts of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar 
are two fables, Mother Hubberd's Tale, and 
the Oak and the Briar; which last is as 
splendid a piece of oratory as any to be found 
in the records of the eloquence of the British 
senate ! Browne, who came after Spenser, 



© 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 189 

and Withers, have left some pleasing allegorical 
poems of this kind. Pope's are as full of sense- 
less finery and trite affectation as if a peer of 
the realm were to sit for his picture with a 
crook and cocked hat on, smiling with an 
insipid air of no meaning, between nature and 
fashion. Sir Philip Sydney^s Arcadia is a 
lasting monument of perverted power ; where 
an image of extreme beauty, as that of ce the 
shepherd boy piping as though he should 
never be old," peeps out once in a hundred 
folio pages, amidst heaps of intricate sophistry 
and scholastic quaintness. It is not at all like 
Nicholas Poussin^s picture, in which he re- 
presents some shepherds wandering out in a 
morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb 
with this inscription — " I also was an Ar- 
cadian \" Perhaps the best pastoral in the 
language is that prose-poem, Walton's Com- 
plete Angler, That well-known work has a 
beauty and romantic interest equal to its sim- 
plicity, and arising out of it. In the descrip- 
tion of a fishing-tackle you perceive the piety 
and humanity of the author's mind. It is to 
be doubted whether Sannazarius's Piscatory 
Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by 
W^alton on the banks of the river Lea. He 
gives the feeling of the open air : we walk 
with him along the dusty road-side, or repose 



190 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

on the banks of the river under a shady tree : 
and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe 
what he beautifully calls " the patience and 
simplicity of poor honest fishermen." We 
accompany them to their inn at night, and 
partake of their simple bnt delicious fare ; 
while Maud, the pretty milk-maid, at her 
mother's desire, sings the classical ditties of 
the poet Marlow ; " Come live with me, and 
be my love." Good cheer is not neglected in 
this work, any more than in Homer, or any 
other history that sets a proper value on the 
good things of this life. The prints in the 
Complete Angler give an additional reality 
and interest to the scenes it describes. While 
Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy 
work, amiable and happy old man, shall last ! 
— It is in the notes to it that we find that 
character of " a fair and happy milk-maid/' 
by Sir Thomas Overbury, which may vie in 
beauty and feeling with Chaucer's character 
of Griselda : 

" A fair and happy milk-maid is a country wench that is 
so far from making herself beautiful by art that one look of 
her's is able to put all face-physic out of countenance. She 
knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, 
therefore minds it not. All her excellences stand in her so 
silently as if they had stolen upon her without her know- 
ledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far 
better than outsides of tissue ; for though she be not arrayed 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 191 

in the spoil of the silk-worm, she is decked in innoconcy, a 
far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long in bed, 
spoil both her complexion and conditions. Nature hath 
taught her too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul : she 
rises therefore with chanticleer, her dame's clock, and at 
night makes the lamb her curfew. Her breath is her own, 
which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made 
haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and 
her heart soft with pity ; and when winter evenings fall 
early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to 
the giddy wheel of Fortune. She doth all things with so 
sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to 
do ill, being her mind is to do well. She bestows her year's 
wages at next fair ; and, in choosing her garments, counts 
no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and 
the bee-hive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she 
lives the longer for 't. She dares go alone, and unfold 
sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because 
she means none : yet, to say the truth, she is never alone, 
for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, 
and prayers, but short ones ; yet they have their efficacy, 
in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. 
Lastly, her dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them ; 
only a Friday's dream is ail her superstition ; that she con- 
ceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she ; and all her care 
is she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers 
stuck upon her winding-sheet." 

The love of the country has been sung by 
poets, and echoed by philosophers ; but the 
first have not attempted, and the last have 
been greatly puzzled to account for it. I do 
not know that any one has ever explained, 
satisfactorily, the true source of this feeling, 
or of that soothing emotion which the sight 



192 ON THOMSON AND cowper. 

of the country, or a lively description of rural 
objects hardly ever fails to infuse into the 
mind. Some have ascribed this feeling to the 
natural beauty of the objects themselves ; 
others to the freedom from care, the silence 
and tranquillity which scenes of retirement 
afford ; others to the healthy and innocent 
employments of a country life ; others to the 
simplicity of country manners, and others to 
a variety of different causes ; but none to the 
right one. All these, indeed, have their 
effect; but there is another principal one 
which has not been touched upon, or only 
slightly glanced at. I will not, however, 
imitate Mr. Home Tooke, who after enumer- 
ating seventeen different definitions of the 
verb, and laughing at them all as deficient 
and nugatory, at the end of two quarto 
volumes does not tell us what the verb really 
is, and has left posterity to pluck out " the 
heart of his mystery." I will say at once 
what it is that distinguishes this interest from 
others, and that is its abstractedness. The 
interest we feel in human nature is exclusive, 
and confined to the individual ; the interest 
we feel in external nature is common, and 
transferable from one object to all others of 
the same class. Thus : 

Rousseau in his Confessions relates that, 



ON THOMSON AND COVVPER. 193 

when he took possession of his room at 
Annecy, he found that he could see " a little 
spot of green" from his window, which en- 
deared his situation the more to him because, 
he says, it was the first time he had had this 
object constantly before him since he left 
Boissyj the place where he was at school when 
a child. # Some such feeling as that here de- 
scribed will be found lurking at the bottom of 
all our attachments of this sort. Were it not 
for the recollections habitually associated with 
them, natural objects could not interest the 
mind in the manner they do. No doubt, the 
sky is beautiful, the clouds sail majestically 
along its bosom ; the sun is cheering ; there 
is something exquisitely graceful in the 
manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its 
branches; the motion with which they bend 
and tremble in the evening breeze is soft and 
lovely ; there is music in the babbling of a 
brook ; the view from the top of a mountain 
is full of grandeur ; nor can we behold the 
ocean with indifference. Or, as the Minstrel 
sweetly sings, 

" Oh how canst thou renounce the boundless store 
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields ! 

* Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for 
an old post which stood in the court-yard before the house 
where he was brought up. 

O 



194 ON THOMSON AND COVVPER. 

The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, 
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ; 

All that the genial ray of morning gilds, 
And all that echoes to the song of even, 

All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, 
And all the dread magnificence of heaven, 
Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven !" 

It is not, however, the beautiful and mag- 
nificent alone that we admire in Nature ; the 
most insignificant and rudest objects are often 
found connected with the strongest emotions ; 
we become attached to the most common and 
familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom 
we have long known, and from whom we have 
received many benefits. It is because natural 
objects have been associated with the sports 
of our childhood, with air and exercise, with 
our feelings in solitude, when the mind takes 
the strongest hold of things, and clings with 
the fondest interest to whatever strikes its at- 
tention ; with change of place, the pursuit of 
new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends ; 
it is because they have surrounded us in 
almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in 
pleasure and in pain ; because they have been 
one chief source and nourishment of our 
feelings, and a part of our being, that we love 
them as we do ourselves. 

There is, generally speaking, the same 
foundation for our love of Nature as for all 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 195 

our habitual attachments, namely, association 
of ideas. But this is not all. That which 
distinguishes this attachment from others is 
the transferable nature of our feelings with 
respect to physical objects ; the associations 
connected with any one object extending to 
the whole class. Our having been attached 
to any particular person does not make us feel 
the same attachment to the next person we 
may chance to meet ; but, if we have once 
associated strong feelings of delight with the 
objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes 
indissoluble^ and we shall ever after feel the 
same attachment to other objects of the same 
sort. 1 remember^ when I was abroad, the 
trees, and grass, and wet leaves, rustling in 
the walks of the Thuilleries, seemed to be as 
much English, to be as much the same trees 
and grass, that I had always been used to, as 
the sun shining over my head was the same 
sun which I saw in England ; the faces only 
were foreign to me. \Vhence comes this 
difference? It arises from our always imper- 
ceptibly connecting the idea of the individual 
with man, and only the idea of the class 
with natural objects. In the one case, the 
external appearance or physical structure is 
the least thing to be attended to ; in the other, 
it is every thing. The springs that move the 

o 2 



196 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

human form, and make it friendly or adverse 
to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity 
of motives, passions, and ideas, contained in 
that narrow compass, of which I know no- 
thing, and in which 1 have no share. Each 
individual is a world to himself, governed by 
a thousaud contradictory and wayward im- 
pulses. I can, therefore, make no inference 
from one individual to another; nor can my 
habitual sentiments, with respect to any indi- 
vidual, extend beyond himself to others, A 
crowd of people presents a disjointed, confus- 
ed and unsatisfactory appearance to the eye, 
because there is nothing to connect the motley 
assemblage into one continuous or general 
impression, unless when there is some common 
object of interest to fix their attention, as in 
the case of a full pit at the play-house. The 
same principle will also account for that feel- 
ing of littleness^ vacuity, and perplexity, which 
a stranger feels on entering the streets of a 
populous city. Every individual he meets is 
a blow to his personal identity. Every new 
face is a teazing, unanswered riddle. He feels 
the same wearisome sensation in walking from 
Oxford Street to Temple Bar, as a person 
would do who should be compelled to read 
through the first leaf of all the volumes in a 
library. But it is otherwise with respect to 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 197 

nature. A flock of sheep is not a contempti- 
ble, but a beautiful, sight. The greatest 
number and variety of physical objects do not 
puzzle the will, or distract the attention, but 
are massed together under one uniform and 
harmonious feeling. The heart reposes in 
greater security on the immensity of Nature's 
works, " expatiates freely there, " and finds 
elbow room and breathing space. We are 
always at home with Nature. There is neither 
hypocrisy, caprice, nor mental reservation in 
her favours. Our intercourse with her is not 
liable to accident or change, suspicion or 
disappointment : she smiles on us still the 
same. A rose is always sweet, a lily is always 
beautiful : we do not hate the one, nor envy 
the other. If we have once enjoyed the cool 
shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep 
repose by the sound of a brook running at its 
foot, we are sure that wherever w 7 e can find a 
shady stream we can enjoy the same pleasure 
again ; so that when we imagine these objects, 
we can easily form a mystic personification of 
the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad 
or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its 
tempting shade. Hence the origin of the 
Grecian mythology. All objects of the same 
kind being the same, not only in their appear- 
ance, but in their practical uses, we habitually 



198 OX THOMSON AND COWPER. 

confound them together under the same gene- 
ral idea ; and whatever fondness we may have 
conceived for one is immediately placed to 
the common account. The most opposite 
kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually 
go to enrich the same sentiment ; and in our 
love of nature, there is all the force of indi- 
vidual attachment, combined with the most 
airy abstraction. It is this circumstance which 
gives that refinement, expansion, and wild 
interest, to feelings of this sort, when strongly 
excited, which every one must have experienced 
who is a true lover of nature. 

It is the same setting sun that we see and 
remember year after year, through summer 
and winter, seed-time and harvest. The moon 
that shines above our heads, or plays through 
the chequered shade, is the same moon that 
we used to read of in Mrs. RadclinVs ro- 
mances. We see no difference in the trees 
first covered with leaves in the spring. The 
dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream — 
the woods swept by the loud blast — the dark 
massy foliage of autumn — the grey trunks and 
naked branches of the trees in winter — the 
sequestered copse, and wide-extended heath — 
the glittering sunny showers, and December 
snows — are still the same, or accompanied 
with the same thoughts and feelings : there is 



ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 199 

no object, however trifling or rude, that does 
not in some mood or other find its way 
into the heart, as a link in the chain of our 
living being ; and this it is that makes good 
that saying of the poet — 

" To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' * 

Thus nature is a kind of universal home, and 
every object it presents to us an old acquaint- 
ance with unaltered looks ; for there is that 
consent and mutual harmony among all her 
works, one undivided spirit pervading them 
throughout, that, to him who has well ac- 
quainted himself with them, they speak always 
the same well - known language, striking on 
the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the 
tumult of the world, like the music of one's 
native tongue heard in some far-off country. 

" My heart leaps up when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky : 
So was it when my life began, 
So is it now I am a man, 
So shall it be when I grow old and die. 
The child 's the father of the man, 
And I would have my years to be 
Linked each to each by natural piety." 

The daisy that first strikes the child's eye, 
in trying to leap over his own shadow, is the 
same flower that with timid upward glance 
implores the grown man not to tread upon it. 



200 ON THOMSON AND COWPER. 

Rousseau, in one of his botanical excursions, 
meeting with the periwinkle, fell upon his 
knees, crying out — Ah! voila de la pervenche ! 
It was because he had, thirty years before, 
brought home the same flower with him in 
one of his rambles with Madame de Warens, 
near Chambery. It struck him as the same 
identical little blue flower that he remembered 
so well ; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter 
regret were effaced from his memory. That, 
or a thousand other flowers of the same name, 
were the same to him, to the heart, and to 
the eye ; but there was but one Madame 
Warens in the world, whose image was never 
absent from his thoughts ; with whom flowers 
and verdure sprung up beneath his feet, and 
without whom all was cold and barren in 
nature and in his own breast. The cuckoo, 
" that wandering voice/' that comes and goes 
with the spring, mocks our ears with one note 
from youth to age ; and the lapwing, screaming 
round the traveller's path, repeats for ever the 
same sad story of Tereus and Philomel ! 



LECTURE VI. 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, &c. 

I shall in the present Lecture go back to 
the age of Queen Anne, and endeavour to 
give a cursory account of the most eminent of 
our poets, of whom I have not already spoken, 
from that period to the present. 

The three principal poets among the wits 
of Queen Anne's reign, next to Pope, were 
Prior, Swift, and Gay. Parnell, though a 
good-natured, easy man, and a friend to poets 
and the Muses, was himself little more than 
an occasional versifier; and Arbuthnot, who 
had as much wit as the best of them, chose to 
show it in prose, and not in verse. He had 
a very notable share in the immortal History 
of John Bull, and the inimitable and praise- 
worthy Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.— 
There has been a great deal said and written 



202 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

about the plagiarisms of Sterne ; but the only 
reai plagiarism he has been guilty of (if such 
theft were a crime), is in taking Tristram 
Shandy's father from Martin's, the elder 
Scriblerus. The original idea of the character, 
that is, of the opinionated, captious old gentle- 
man, who is pedantic, not from profession, 
but choice, belongs to Arbuthnot. Arbuth- 
not's style is distinguished from that of his 
contemporaries, even by a greater degree of 
terseness and conciseness. He leaves out 
every superfluous word ; is sparing of con- 
necting particles, and introductory phrases ; 
uses always the simplest forms of construc- 
tion ; and is more a master of the idiomatic 
peculiarities and internal resources of the lan- 
guage than almost any other writer. There 
is a research in the choice of a plain, as well 
as of an ornamented or learned, style ; and, in 
fact, a great deal more. Among common 
English words, there may be ten expressing 
the same thing with different degrees of force 
and propriety, and only one of them the very 
word we want, because it is the only one that 
answers exactly with the idea we have in our 
minds. Each word in familiar use has a set 
of associations and shades of meaning attached 
to it, and distinguished from each other by 
inveterate custom ; and it is in having the 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. £03 

whole of these at our command, and in know- 
ing which to choose, as they are called for by 
the occasion, that the perfection of a pure 
conversational prose-style consists. But in 
writing a florid and artificial style, neither the 
same range of invention, nor the same quick 
sense of propriety — nothing but learning is 
required. If you know the words, and their 
general meaning, it is sufficient : it is impos- 
sible you should know the nicer inflections of 
signification, depending on an endless variety 
of application, in expressions borrowed from 
a foreign or dead language. They all impose 
upon the ear alike, because they are not 
familiar to it ; the only distinction left is be- 
tween the pompous and the plain; the sesqui- 
pedalia verba have this advantage, that they 
are all of one length ; and any words are 
equally fit for a learned style, so that we 
have never heard them before. Themistocles 
thought that the same sounding epithets could 
not suit all subjects, as the same dress does 
not fit all persons. The style of our modern 
prose-writers is very fine in itself; but it 
wants variety of inflection and adaptation ; it 
hinders us from seeing the differences of the 
things it undertakes to describe. 

What I have here insisted on will be found 
to be the leading distinction between the style 



204 ON' SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

of Swift, Arbuthnot, Steele, and the other 
writers of the age of Queen Anne, and the 
style of Dr. Johnson, which succeeded to it. 
The one is English, and the other is not. 
The writers first mentioned, in order to ex- 
press their thoughts, looked about them for 
the properest word to convey any idea, that 
the language which they spoke, and which 
their countrymen understood, afforded : Dr. 
Johnson takes the first English word that 
offers, and, by translating it at a venture into 
the first Greek or Latin word he can think of, 
only retaining the English termination, pro- 
duces an extraordinary effect upon the reader, 
by much the same sort of mechanical process 
that Trim converted the old jack-boots into a 
pair of new mortars. 

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man, who 
liked to think and talk better than to read or 
write ; who, however, wrote much and well, 
but too often by rote. His long compound 
Latin phrases required less thought, and took 
up more room than others. What shows the 
facilities afforded by this style of imposing 
generalization is that it was instantly adopted 
with success by all those who were writers by 
profession, or who were not; and that, at pre- 
sent^ we cannot see a lottery puff or a quack 
advertisement pasted against a wall, that is 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 205 

not perfectly Johnsonian in style. Formerly, 
the learned had the privilege of translating 
their notions into Latin; and a great privilege 
*t was, as it confined the reputation and 
emoluments of learning to themselves. Dr. 
Johnson may be said to have naturalised this 
privilege, by inventing a sort of jargon trans- 
lated half-way out of one language into the 
other, which raised the Doctor's reputation, 
and confounded all ranks in literature. 

In the short period above alluded to, authors 
professed to write as other men spoke ; every 
body now 7 affects to speak as authors write ; 
and any one who retains the use of his 
mother tongue, either in writing or conver- 
sation, is looked upon as a very illiterate 
character. 

Prior and Gay belong, in the characteristic 
excellences of their style, to the same class of 
writers with Suckling, Rochester, and Sedley : 
the former imbibed most of the licentious 
levity of the age of Charles II. and carried it 
on beyond the Revolution under King Wil- 
liam. Prior has left no single work equal to 
Gay's Fables, or the Beggar's Opera. But 
in his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has shown 
even more genius, more playfulness, more 
mischievous gaiety. No one has exceeded 
him in the laughing grace with which he 



206 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

glances at a subject that will not bear exami- 
ning, with which he gently hints at what 
cannot be directly insisted on, with which he 
half conceals^ and half draws aside, the veil 
from some of the Muses' nicest mysteries. 
His Muse is, in fact, a giddy wanton flirt, who 
spends her time in playing at snap-dragon and 
blind-man's buff, who tells what she should 
not, and knows more than she tells. She 
laughs at the tricks she shows us, and blushes, 
or would be thought to do so, at what she 
keeps concealed. Prior has translated several 
of Fontaine's Tales from the French ; and 
they have lost nothing in the translation, 
either of their wit or malice. I need not 
name them : but the one I like the most is 
that of Cupid in search of Venus's doves. No 
one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender 
point, a loose moral, with such unconscious 
archness, and careless raillery, as if he gained 
new self-possession and adroitness from the 
perplexity and confusion into which he throws 
scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to 
seize on all the ticklish parts of his subject, 
from their involuntarily shrinking under his 
grasp. Some of his imitations of Boileau's 
servile addresses to Louis XIV. which he has 
applied with a happy mixture of wit and 



ON SWIFT,, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 207 

patriotic enthusiasm to King William, or as 
he familiarly calls him, to 

" Little Will, the scourge of France, 
Xo Godhead, but the first of men," 

are excellent, and show the same talent for 
double-entendre and the same gallantry of 
spirit, whether in the softer lyric, or the more 
lively heroic. Some of Prior's bon mots are 
the best that are recorded, His serious poetry, 
as his Solomon, is as heavy as his familiar style 
was light and agreeable. His moral Muse is 
a Magdalen, and should not have obtruded 
herself on public view. Henry and Emma is 
a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Nut- 
brown Maid, and not so good as the original. 
In short, as we often see in other cases, where 
men thwart their own genius, Prior's senti- 
mental and romantic productions are mere 
affectation, the result not of powerful impulse 
or real feeling, but of a consciousness of his 
deficiencies, and a wish to supply their place 
by labour and art. 

Gay was sometimes grosser than Prior, not 
systematically, but inadvertently — from not 
being so well aware of what he was about ; 
nor was there the same necessity for caution, 
for his grossness is by no means so seductive 
or inviting. 



208 ON SWIFT, YGUXG, GRAY, &C. 

Gay's Fables are certainly a work of great 
merit, both as to the quantity of invention 
implied, and as to the elegance and facility 
of the execution. They are, however, spun 
out too long; the descriptions and narrative 
are too diffuse and deusltory • and the moral 
is sometimes without point. They are more 
like Tales than fables. The best are, perhaps, 
the Hare with Many Friends, the Monkeys, 
and the Fox at the Point of Death. His 
Pastorals are pleasing and poetical. But his 
capital work is his Beggar's Opera. It is in- 
deed a masterpiece of wit and genius, not to 
say of morality. In composing it, he chose 
a very unpromising ground to work upon, 
and he has prided himself in adorning it with 
all the graces, the precision, and brilliancy of 
style. It is a vulgar error to call this a vulgar 
play. So far from it that I do not scruple 
to say that it appears to me one of the most 
refined productions in the language. The 
elegance of the composition is in exact pro* 
portion to the coarseness of the materials : by 
" happy alchemy of mind," the author has 
extracted an essence of refinement from the 
dregs of human life, and turns its very dross 
into gold. The scenes, characters, and inci- 
dents are, in themselves, of the lowest and 
most disgusting kind : but, by the sentiments 



OX SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 209 

and reflections which are put into the mouths 
of highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, 
wives, or daughters, he has converted this 
motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and 
ladies, satirists and philosophers, He has 
also effected this transformation without once 
violating probability^ or " o'erstepping the 
modesty of nature." In fact, Gay has turned 
the tables on the critics ; and by the assumed 
license of the mock-heroic style, has enabled 
himself to do justice to nature, that is, to give 
all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling 
to the thoughts and expressions, without being 
called to the bar of false taste and affected 
delicacy. The extreme beauty and feeling of 
the song, " Woman is like the fair flower in 
its lustre," are only equalled by its charac- 
teristic propriety and naivete, Polly describes 
her lover going to the gallows with the same 
touching simplicity, and with all the natural 
fondness of a young girl in her circumstances, 
who sees, in his approaching catastrophe, 
nothing but the misfortunes and the personal 
accomplishments of the object of her affec- 
tions. ci I see him sweeter than the nosegay 
in his hand ; the admiring crowd lament that 
so lovely a youth should come to an untimely 
end : even butchers weep, and Jack Ketch 
refuses his fee rather than consent to tie the 

p 



c 210 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

fatal knot. 5 ' The preservation of the character 
and costume is complete. It has been said 
by a great authority — u There is some soul 
of goodness in things evil :" and the Beggar's 
Opera is a good-natured but instructive com- 
ment on this text. The poet has thrown all 
the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all 
the intoxication of pleasure, and the vanity of 
despair, round the short-lived existence of his 
heroes ; while Peachum and Lockitt are seen 
in the back-ground, parcelling out their months 
and weeks between them. The general view 
exhibited of human life is of the most subtle 
and abstracted kind. The author has, with 
great felicity, brought out the good qualities 
and interesting emotions almost inseparable 
from the lowest conditions; and, with the 
same penetrating glance, has detected the dis- 
guises which rank and circumstances lend to 
exalted vice. Every line in this sterling 
comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with 
the keenest sarcasm. The very wit, however, 
takes off from the offensiveness of the satire ; 
and I have seen great statesmen, very great 
statesmen, heartily enjoying the joke, laughing 
most immoderately at the compliments paid to 
them, as not much worse than pickpockets and 
cut -throats in a different line of life, and 
pleased, as it were, to see themselves human- 



b 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 211 

ised by some sort of fellowship with their 
kind. Indeed, it may be said that the moral 
of the piece is to show the vulgarity of vice ; 
or that the same violations of integrity and 
decorum, the same habitual sophistry in palli- 
ating their want of principle, are common to 
the great and powerful, with the meanest and 
most contemptible of the species. What can 
be more convincing than the arguments used 
by these would-be politicians, to show that, 
in hypocrisy, selfishness and treachery, they 
do not come up to many of their betters ? 
The exclamation of Mrs, Peachum, when 
her daughter marries Macheath, " Hussy, 
hussy, you will be as ill used, and as much 
neglected, as if you had married a lord," is 
worth all Miss Hannah Morels laboured 
invectives on the laxity of the manners of 
high life ! 

I shall conclude this account of Gay with 
his verses on Sir Richard Blackmore, which 
may serve at once as a specimen of his own 
manner, and as a character of a voluminous 
contemporary poet, who was admired by Mr, 
Locke and knighted by King William III. 

" See who ne'er was nor will be half-read, 
Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred ; 
Praised great Eliza in God's anger, 
Till all true Englishmen cried, ' Hang her !'— ■ 

p 2 



212 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

MauPd human wit in one thick satire ; 

Next in three books spoil'd human nature : 

Undid Creation at a jerk, 

And of Redemption made damn'd work. 

Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her 

Full in the middle of the Scripture. 

What wonders there the man, grown old, did ! 

Sternhold himself he out-Sternholded. 

Made David seem so mad and freakish, 

All thought him just what thought King Achish. 

No mortal read his Solomon 

But judg'd Re'boam his own son. 

Moses he serv'd as Moses Pharaoh, 

And Deborah as she Siserah ; 

Made Jeremy full sore to cry, 

And Job himself curse God and die. 

What punishment all this must follow ? 

Shall Arthur use him like King Tollo ? 

Shall David as Uriah slay him ? 

Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him ? 

No ! — none of these ! Heaven spare his life ! 

But send him, honest Job, thy wife !" 

Gay's Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, 
is as pleasant as walking the streets must have 
been at the time when it was written. His 
ballad of Black Eyed Susan is one of the 
most delightful that can be imagined ; nor do 
I see that it is a bit the worse for Mr. Jekyll's 
parody on it* 

Swift's reputation as a poet has been in a 
manner obscured by the greater splendour, by 
the natural force and inventive genius of his 
prose writings ; but if he had never written 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 213 

either the Tale of a Tub or Gullivers Travels, 
his name merely as a poet would have come 
down to us, and have gone down to posterity, 
with well-earned honours. His imitations of 
Horace, and still more his Verses on his own 
Death, place him in the first rank of agree- 
able moralists in verse. There is not only a 
dry humour, an exquisite tone of irony, in 
these productions of his pen, but there is a 
touching, unpretending pathos, mixed up with 
the most whimsical and eccentric strokes of 
pleasantry and satire. His Description of the 
Morning in London, and of a City Shower, 
which were first published in the Tatler, are 
among the most delightful of the contents of 
that very delightful work. Swift shone as one 
of the most sensible of the poets ; he is also 
distinguished as one of the most nonsensical 
of them. No man has written so many lack- 
a-daisical, slip-shod, tedious, trifling, foolish, 
fantastical verses as he, which are so little an 
imputation on the wisdom of the writer ; and 
which, in fact, only show his readiness to 
oblige others, and to forget himself. He has 
gone so far as to invent a new stanza of four- 
teen and sixteen syllable lines for Mary the 
cookmaid to vent her budget of nothings, and 
for Mrs. Harris to gossip with the deaf old 
housekeeper. Oh 5 when shall we have such 



214 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

another Rector of Laracor ! — The Tale of a 
Tub is one of the most masterly compositions 
in the language, whether for thought, wit, or 
style. It is so capital and undeniable a proof 
of the author's talents, that Dr. Johnson, who 
did not like Swift, would not allow that he 
wrote it. It is hard that the same performance 
should stand in the way of a man's promotion 
to a bishopric, as wanting gravity, and at the 
same time be denied to be his, as having too 
much wit. It is a pity the Doctor did not 
find out some graver author, for whom he felt 
a critical kindness, on whom to father this 
splendid, but unacknowledged, production. — 
Dr. Johnson could not deny that Gulliver's 
Travels were his ; he therefore disputed their 
merits, and said that, after the first idea of them 
was conceived, they were easy to execute ; all 
the rest followed mechanically. I do not know 
how that may be ; but the mechanism em- 
ployed is something very different from any 
that the author of Rasselas was in the habit of 
bringing to bear on such occasions. There is 
nothing more futile, as well as invidious, than 
this mode of criticising a work of original 
genius. Its greatest merit is supposed to be 
in the invention ; and you say, very wisely, 
that it is not in the execution. You might as 
well take away the merit of the invention of 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 215 

the telescope, by saying that, after its uses 
were explained and understood, any ordinary 
eyesight could look through it. Whether the 
excellence of Gulliver's Travels is in the 
conception or the execution, is of little conse- 
quence ; the power is somewhere, and it is a 
power that has moved the world. The power 
is not that of big words and vaunting common 
places. Swift left these to those who wanted 
them ; and has done what his acuteness and 
intensity of mind alone could enable any one 
to conceive or to perform. His object was to 
strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing 
air which external circumstances throw around 
them ; and for this purpose he has cheated 
the imagination of the illusions which the 
prejudices of sense and of the world put upon 
it, by reducing every thing to the abstract 
predicament of size. He enlarges or dimi- 
nishes the scale, as he wishes, to show the 
insignificance or the grossness of our over- 
weening self-love. That he has done this 
with mathematical precision, with complete 
presence of mind and perfect keeping, in a 
manner that comes equally home to the under- 
standing of the man and of the child, does not 
take away from the merit of the work or the 
genius of the author. He has taken a new- 
view of human nature, such as a being of a 



2X6 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

higher sphere might take of it ; he has torn 
the scales from off his moral vision ; he has 
tried an experiment upon human life, and 
sifted its pretensions from the alloy of circum- 
stances ; he has measured it with a rule, has 
weighed it in a balance, and found it, for the 
most part, wanting and worthless, in substance 
and in show. Nothing solid, nothing valuable 
is left in his system but virtue and wisdom. 
What a libel is this upon mankind ! What 
a convincing proof of misanthropy ! What 
presumption and what malice prepense, to 
show men what they are, and to teach them 
what they ought to be ! What a mortifying 
stroke, aimed at national glory, is that unlucky 
incident of Gulliver's wading across the chan- 
nel and carrying off the whole fleet of Blefuscu! 
After that, we have only to consider which of 
the contending parties was in the right. What 
a shock to personal vanity is given in the 
account of Gulliver's nurse Glumdalclitch ! 
Still, notwithstanding the disparagement to 
her personal charms, her good nature remains 
the same amiable quality as before. [ cannot 
see the harm, the misanthropy, the immoral 
and degrading tendency of this. The moral 
lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition 
is amusing. It is an attempt to tear off the 
mask of imposture from the world ; and no- 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 217 

thing but imposture has a right to complain 
of it. It is, indeed, the way with our quacks 
in morality to preach up the dignity of human 
nature, to pamper pride and hypocrisy with 
the idle mockeries of the virtues they pretend 
to, and which they have not : but it was not 
Swift's way to cant morality, or any thing 
else ; nor did his genius prompt him to write 
unmeaning panegyrics on mankind ! 

I do not, therefore, agree with the estimate 
of Swift's moral or intellectual character, 
given by an eminent critic, who does not seem 
to have forgotten the party politics of Swift. 
I do not carry my political resentments so far 
back : I can at this time of day forgive Swift 
for having been a Tory. I feel little disturb- 
ance (whatever I might think of them) at his 
political sentiments, which died with him, 
considering how much else he has left behind 
him of a more solid and imperishable nature ! 
If he had, indeed, (like some others) merely 
left behind him the lasting infamy of a de- 
stroyer of his country, or the shining example 
of an apostate from liberty, I might have 
thought the case altered. 

The determination with which Swift per- 
sisted in a preconcerted theory, savoured of 
the morbid affection of which he died. There 
is nothing more likely to drive a man mad 



218 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &.C. 

than the being unable to get rid of the idea 
of the distinction between right and wrong, 
and an obstinate, constitutional preference of 
the true to the agreeable. Swift was not a 
Frenchman. In this respect he differed from 
Rabelais and Voltaire. They have been ac- 
counted the three greatest wits in modern 
times ; but their wit was of a peculiar kind 
in each. They are little beholden to each 
other ; there is some resemblance between 
Lord Peter in the Tale of a Tub, and 
Rabelais' Friar John ; but in general they are 
all three authors of a substantive character in 
themselves. Swift's wit (particularly in his 
chief prose works) was serious, saturnine, and 
practical ; Rabelais' was fantastical and 
joyous; Voltaire's was light, sportive, and 
verbal. Swift's wit was the wit of sense ; 
Rabelais', the wit of nonsense ; Voltaire's, of 
indifference to both. The ludicrous in Swift 
arises out of his keen sense of impropriety, 
his soreness and impatience of the least 
absurdity. He separates, with a severe and 
caustic air, truth from falsehood, folly from 
wisdom, " shews vice her own image, scorn 
her own feature ;" and it is the force, the 
precision, and the honest abruptness with 
which the separation is made, that excites our 
surprise, our admiration, and laughter. He 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C, 219 

sets a mark of reprobation on that which 
offends good sense and good manners, which 
cannot be mistaken, and which holds it up to 
our ridicule and contempt ever after. His 
occasional disposition to trifling (already no- 
ticed) was a relaxation from the excessive 
earnestness of his mind. Indignatio facit 
versus. His better genius was his spleen. It 
was the biting acrimony of his temper that 
sharpened his other faculties. The truth of 
his perceptions produced the pointed corusca- 
tions of his wit ; his playful irony was the 
result of inward bitterness of thought ; his 
imagination was the product of the literal, 
dry, incorrigible tenaciousness of his under- 
standing. He endeavoured to escape from 
the persecution of realities into the regions 
of fancy, and invented his Lilliputians and 
Brobdignagians, Yahoos, and Houynhyms, 
as a diversion to the more painful knowledge 
of the world around him : they only made 
him laugh, while men and women made him 
angry. His feverish impatience made him 
view r the infirmities of that great baby the 
w r orld with the same scrutinizing glance and 
jealous irritability that a parent regards the 
failings of its offspring ; but, as Rousseau has 
well observed, parents have not on this ac- 
count been supposed to have more affection 



220 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &.C. 

for other people's children than their own. 
In other respects, and except from the spark- 
ling effervescence of his gall, Swift's brain was 
as " dry as the remainder biscuit after a 
voyage." He hated absurdity — Rabelais loved 
it, exaggerated it with supreme satisfaction, 
luxuriated in its endless varieties, rioted in 
nonsense, " reigned there and revelled." He 
dwelt on the absurd and ludicrous for the 
pleasure they gave him, not for the pain. He 
lived upon laughter, and died laughing. He 
indulged his vein, and took his full swing of 
folly. He did not baulk his fancy or his 
readers. His wit was to him " as riches fine- 
less ;" he saw no end of his wealth in that 
way, and set no limits to his extravagance : he 
was communicative, prodigal, boundless, and 
inexhaustible. His were the Saturnalia of wit, 
the riches and the royalty, the health and long 
life. He is intoxicated with gaiety, mad with 
folly. His animal spirits drown him in a 
flood of mirth : his blood courses up and 
down his veins like wine. His thirst of enjoy- 
ment is as great as his thirst of drink : his 
appetite for good things of all sorts is unsa- 
tisfied, and there is a never-ending supply. 
Discourse is dry ; so they moisten their words 
m their cups, and relish their dry jests with 
plenty of Botargos and dried neats* tongues. 



OX SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 221 

It is like Camacho's wedding in Don Quixote, 
where Sancho ladled out whole pullets and 
fat geese from the soup - kettles at a pull. 
The flagons are set a running, their tongues 
wag at the same time, and their mirth flows 
as a river. How Friar John roars and lays 
about him in the vineyard! How Panurge 
whines in the storm, and how dexterously he 
contrives to throw the sheep overboard ! How 
much Pantagruel behaves like a wise king ! 
How Gargantua mewls, and pules, and 
slabbers his nurse, and demeans himself most 
like a royal infant ! what provinces he de- 
vours ! what seas he drinks up ! How he 
eats, drinks, and sleeps — sleeps, eats, and 
drinks ! The style of Rabelais is no less 
prodigious than his matter. His words are of 
marrow, unctuous, dropping fatness. He was 
a mad wag, the king of good fellows, and 
prince of practical philosophers ! 

Rabelais was a Frenchman of the old 
school — Voltaire of the new. The wit of 
the one arose from an exuberance of enjoy- 
ment — of the other, from an excess of in- 
difference, real or assumed, Voltaire had no 
enthusiasm for one thing or another : he made 
light of every thing. In his hands all things 
turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver 
money in the Arabian Nights were changed 



222 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

by the hands of the enchanter into little dry 
crumbling leaves ! He is a Parisian. He 
never exaggerates, is never violent : he treats 
things with the most provoking sang froid ; 
and expresses his contempt by the most indi- 
rect hints, and in the fewest words, as if he 
hardly thought them worth even his contempt. 
He retains complete possession of himself and 
of his subject. He does not effect his pur- 
by the eagerness of his blows, but by the 
delicacy of his tact. The poisoned wound he 
inflicted was so fine as scarcely to be felt till 
it rankled and festered in its "mortal conse- 
quences." His callousness was an excellent 
foil for the antagonists he had mostly to deal 
with. He took knaves and fools on his shield 
well. He stole aw r ay its cloak from grave im- 
posture. If he reduced other things below 
their true value, making them seem worthless 
and hollow, he did not degrade the pretensions 
of tyranny and superstition below their true 
value, by making them seem utterly worthless 
and hollow, as contemptible as they were 
odious. This was the service he rendered to 
truth and mankind ! His Candide is a master- 
piece of wit. It has been called "the dull 
product of a scoffer's pen/' It is, indeed, 
" the product of a scoffer's pen f* but after 
reading the Excursion, few people will think 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 223 

it dull. It is in the most perfect keeping, 
and without any appearance of effort. Every 
sentence tells, and the whole reads like one 
sentence. There is something sublime in 
Martin's sceptical indifference to moral 
good and evil. It is the repose of the grave. 
It is better to suffer this living death than a 
living martyrdom. " Nothing can touch him 
further. 53 The moral of Candide (such as it 
is) is the same as that of Rasselas : the exe- 
cution is different. Voltaire says, " A great 
book is a great evil." Dr. Johnson would have 
laboured this short apophthegm into a volu- 
minous commonplace. Voltaire's traveller (in 
another work) being asked iC whether he likes 
black or white mutton best," replies that u he 
is indifferent, provided it is tender." Dr. 
Johnson did not get at a conclusion by so 
short a way as this. If Voltaire's licentious- 
ness is objected to me, I say, let it be placed 
to its true account, the manners of the age 
and court in which he lived. The lords and 
ladies of the bedchamber in the reign of 
Louis XV. found no fault with the immoral 
tendency of his writings. Why then should 
our modern purists quarrel with them ? — But 
to return. 

Young is a gloomy epigrammatist. He has 
abused great powers both of thought and 



224 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &,C. 

language. His moral reflections are some- 
times excellent ; but he spoils their beauty by 
overloading them with a religious horror, and 
at the same time giving them all the smart 
turns and quaint expressions of an enigma or 
repartee in verse. The well-known lines on 
Procrastination are in his best manner : 

" Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer ; 
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; 
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life. 
Procrastination is the thief of time ; 
Year after year it steals, till all are fled, 
And to the mercies of a moment leaves 
The vast concerns of an eternal scene. 

" Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears 
The palm, * That all men are about to live,' 
For ever on the brink of being born. 
All pay themselves the compliment to think 
They, one day, shall not drivel ; and their pride 
On this reversion takes up ready praise ; 
At least, their own ; their future selves applauds ; 
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead ! 
Time lodg'd in their own hands is Folly's vails : 
That lodg'd in Fate's, to Wisdom they consign ; 
The thing they can't but purpose they postpone. 
'Tis not in Folly not to scorn a fool ; 
And scarce in human Wisdom to do more. 
All promise is poor dilatory man, 
And that through every stage. When young, indeed, 
In full content, we, sometimes, nobly rest, 
Un-anxious for ourselves ; and only wish, 
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. 
At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; 
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG. GRAY, &C. 225 

At fifty chides his infamous delay, 
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ; 
In all the magnanimity of thought 
Resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same. 

" And why ? Because he thinks himself immortal. 
All men think all men mortal, but themselves ; 
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate 
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread ; 
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, 
Soon close ; where, past the shaft, no trace is found. 
As from the wing no scar the sky retains ; 
The parted wave no furrow from the keel ; 
So dies in human hearts the thought of death. 
Ev'n with the tender tear which nature sheds 
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave." 

His Universal Passion is a keen and powerful 
satire ; but the effort takes from the effect, 
and oppresses attention by perpetual and 
violent demands upon it. His tragedy of the 
Revenge is monkish and scholastic. Zanga 
is a vulgar caricature of Iago. The finest 
lines in it are the burst of triumph at the end, 
when his revenge is completed : 

" Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep, 
Let Afric on her hundred thrones rejoice,' ' &c. 

Collins is a writer of a very different stamp, 
who had perhaps less general power of mind 
than Young ; but he had that true vivida vis, 
that genuine inspiration, which alone can give 
birth to the highest efforts of poetry. He 

Q 



226 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

leaves stings in the minds of his readers, cer- 
tain traces of thought and feeling, which 
never wear out, because nature had left them 
in his own mind. He is the only one of the 
minor poets of whom, if he had lived, it can- 
not be said that he might not have done the 
greatest things. The germ is there. He is 
sometimes affected, unmeaning, and obscure ; 
but he also catches rich glimpses of the 
bowers of Paradise, and has lofty aspirations 
after the highest seats of the Muses. With a 
great deal of tinsel and splendid patch-work, 
he has not been able to hide the solid sterling 
ore of genius. In his best works there is an 
attic simplicity, a pathos, and fervour of 
imagination, which make us the more lament 
that the efforts of his mind were at first de- 
pressed by neglect and pecuniary embarrass- 
ment, and at length buried in the gloom of 
an unconquerable and fatal malady. How 7 
many poets have gone through all the horrors 
of poverty and contempt, and ended their 
days in moping melancholy or moody mad- 
ness ! 

" We poets in our youth begin in gladness, 

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." 

Is this the fault of themselves, of nature in 

tempering them of too fine a clay, or of the 

world, that spurner of living, and patron of 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, <XC. 227 

dead merit ? Read the account of Collins — ■ 
with hopes frustrated, with faculties blighted, 
at last when it was too late for himself or 
others, receiving the deceitful favours of re- 
lenting Fortune, which served only to throw 
their sunshine on his decay, and to light him 
to an early grave. He was found sitting with 
every spark of imagination extinguished, and 
with only the faint traces of memory and 
reason left — with only one book in his room, 
the Bible ; " but that/' he said, " was the 
best. " A melancholy damp hung like an 
unwholesome mildew upon his faculties — a 
canker had consumed the flower of his life. 
He produced works of genius, and the public 
regarded them with scorn : he aimed at excel- 
lence that should be his own, and his friends 
treated his efforts as the wanderings of fatuity. 
The proofs of his capacity are, his Ode on 
Evening, his Ode on the Passions (par- 
ticularly the fine personification of Hope), 
his Ode to Fear, the Dirge in Cymbe- 
Jine, the Lines on Thomson's Grave, and 
his Eclogues, parts of which are admi- 
rable. But perhaps his Ode on the Poetical 
Character is the best of all. A rich distilled 
perfume emanates from it like the breath of 
genius; a golden cloud envelopes it; a honeyed 
paste of poetic diction encrusts it, like the 

Q2 



228 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

candied coat of the auricula. His Ode to 
Evening shows equal genius in the images and 
versification. The sounds steal slowly over 
the ear, like the gradual coming on of evening 
itself : 

" If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song 

May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, 
Like thy own solemn springs, 
Thy springs and dying gales, 

O nymph reserv'd, while now the bright-haired sun 
Sits on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts 

With brede ethereal wove, 

O'erhang his wavy bed : 

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat, 
With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing, 

Or where the beetle winds 

His small but sullen horn, 

As oft he rises midst the twilight path, 
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum. 

Now teach me, maid compos'd, 

To breathe some soften'd strain, 

Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkling vale, 
May not unseemly with its stillness suit, 

As, musing slow, I hail 

Thy genial, lov'd return ! 

For when thy folding star arising shows 
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp 

The fragrant Hours and Elves 

Who slept in flow'rs the day, 
And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge 
And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and, lovelier still, 

The pensive Pleasures sweet 

Prepare thy shadowy car ; 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 2^9 

Then lead, calm Votress, where some sheety lake 
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow'd pile. 

Or upland fallows grey 

Reflect its last cool gleam. 

But when chill blust'ring winds, or driving rain, 
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut, 

That from the mountain's side 

Views wilds and swelling floods, 

And hamlets brown, and dim discover'd spires. 
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all 

Thy dewy fingers draw 

The gradual dusky veil. 

While Spring shall pour his show'rs, as oft he wont, 
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve ! 

While Summer loves to sport 

Beneath thy lingering light ; 

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves ; 
Or Winter yelling through the troublous air, 

Affrights thy shrinking train, 

And rudely rends thy robes ; 

So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed, 

Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp ; d Health, 

Thy gentlest influence own, 

And hymn thy favourite name." 

Hammond, whose poems are bound up with 
Collinses, in Bell's pocket edition, was a young 
gentleman, who appears to have fallen in love 
about the year 1740, and who translated Ti- 
bullus into English verse, to let his mistress 
and the public know of it. 

I should conceive that Collins had a much 
greater poetical genius than Gray : he had 



230 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

more of that fine madness which is inseparable 
from it, of its turbid effervescence, of all that 
pushes it to the verge of agony or rapture. 
Gray's Pindaric Odes are, I believe, generally 
given up at present : they are stately and 
pedantic, a kind of methodical borrowed 
phrenzy. But I cannot so easily give up, nor 
will the world be in any haste to part with, 
his Elegy in a Country Church-yard : it is 
one of the most classical productions that ever 
was penned by a refined and thoughtful mind, 
moralising on human life. Mr. Coleridge (in 
his Literary Life) says that his friend Mr. 
Wordsworth had undertaken to show that the 
language of the Elegy is unintelligible : it 
has, however, been understood ■ The Ode on 
a Distant Prospect of Eton College is more 
mechanical and common-place; but it touches 
on certain strings about the heart, that vibrate 
in unison with it to our latest breath. No 
one ever passes by Windsor's " stately heights/' 
or sees the distant spires of Eton College be- 
low r , without thinking of Gray. He deserves 
that we should think of him ; for he thought 
of others, and turned a trembling, ever-watchful 
ear to " the still sad music of humanity." — 
His letters are inimitably fine. If his poems 
are sometimes finical and pedantic, his prose 
is quite free from affectation. He pours his 



OX SWIFT, YOUXG, GRAY, &C. 231 

thoughts out upon paper as they arise in his 
mind ; and they arise in his mind without 
pretence, or constraint, from the pure impulse 
of learned leisure and contemplative indolence. 
He is not here on stilts or in buckram ; but 
smiles in his easy chair, as he moralises 
through the loopholes of retreat, on the bustle 
and raree-show of the world, or on " those 
reverend bedlams, colleges, and schools ! r — 
He had nothing to do but to read and to 
think, and to tell his friends what he read and 
thought. His life was a luxurious thoughtful 
dream. " Be mine," he says in one of his 
Letters, " to read eternal new romances of 
Marivaux and Crebillon. 5 ' And in another, 
to show his contempt for action and the tur- 
moils of ambition, he says to some one, 

" Don't you remember Lords and , 

who are now great statesmen, little dirty boys 
playing at cricket? For my part, I do not 
feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did 
then/' What an equivalent for not being 
wise or great, to be always young ! What a 
happiness never to lose or gain any thing in 
the game of human life, by being never any 
thing more than a looker-on ! 

How different from Shenstone, who only 
wanted to be looked at : who withdrew from 
the world to be followed by the crowd, and 



232 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

courted popularity by affecting privacy ! His 
Letters show him to have lived in a continual 
fever of petty vanity, and to have been a 
finished literary coquet. He seems always 
to say, " You will find nothing in the world 
so amiable as Nature and me : come, and 
admire us/' His poems are indifferent and 
tasteless, except his Pastoral Ballad, his Lines 
on Jemmy Dawson, and his School-mistress, 
which last is a perfect piece of writing. 

Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, 
but he was hardly a great poet. He improved 
his Pleasures of the Imagination in the subse- 
quent editions, by pruning away a great many 
redundances of style and ornament, Arm- 
strong is better^ though he has not chosen 
a very exhilarating subject — ■ The Art of Pre- 
serving Health. Churchill's Satires on the 
Scotch, and Characters of the Players, are as 
good as the subject deserved : they are strong, 
coarse, and full of an air of hardened assu- 
rance. I ought not to pass over without 
mention Green's Poem on the Spleen, or 
Dyer's Grongar Hill. 

The principal name of the period we are 
now 7 come to is that of Goldsmith, than which 
few names stand higher or fairer in the annals 
of modern literature. One should have his 
own pen to describe him as he ought to be 



OX SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 233 

described — amiable, various, and bland, with 
careless inimitable grace touching on every 
kind of excellence — with manners unstudied, 
but a gentle heart — performing miracles of 
skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose 
greatest fault was ignorance of his own worth. 
As a poet, he is the most flowing and elegant 
of our versifiers since Pope, with traits of 
artless nature which Pope had not, and with 
a peculiar felicity in his turns upon words, 
which he constantly repeated with delightful 
efYect : such as — 

66 His lot, though small, 



He sees that little lot, the lot of all." 
* * * * 

* Andturn'd and look'd, and turn'd to look again." 

As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has 
charmed all Europe. What reader is there in 
the civilised world who is not the better for 
the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. 
Primrose demolished so deliberately with the 
poker — for the knowledge of the guinea 
w 7 hich the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in 
their pockets — the adventure of the picture 
of the Vicar's family, which could not be got 
into the house — and that of the Flamborough 
family, all painted with oranges in their hands 
— or for the story of the case of shagreen 
spectacles and the cosmogony ? 

As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin 



234 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

draws forth new powers from Mr. Liston's 
face. That alone is praise enough for it. 
Poor Goldsmith ! how happy he has made 
others ! how unhappy he was in himself ! He 
never had the pleasure of reading his own 
works ! He had only the satisfaction of good- 
naturedly relieving the necessities of others, 
and the consolation of being harassed to death 
with his own ! He is the most amusing and 
interesting person, in one of the most amusing 
and interesting books in the world, Boswell's 
Life of Johnson. His peach-coloured coat shall 
always bloom in Boswell's writings, and his 
fame survive in his own ! — His genius was a 
mixture of originality and imitation : he could 
do nothing without some model before him, 
and he could copy nothing that he did not 
adorn with the graces of his own mind. — 
Almost all the latter part of the Vicar of 
Wakefield, and a great deal of the former, is 
taken from Joseph Andrews ; but the circum- 
stances I have mentioned above are not. 

The finest things he has left behind him in 
verse are his character of a country school- 
master, and that prophetic description ol 
Burke in the Retaliation. His moral Essays, 
in the Citizen of the World, are as agreeable 
chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of 
didactic discourses. 



OX SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 235 

Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious 
with ease, learned without affectation. He 
had a happiness which some have been 
prouder of than he, who deserved it less- 
he was poet-laureat. 

" And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead, 
That laurel garland, crown'd his living head." 

But he bore his honours meekly, and per- 
formed his half-yearly task regularly. 1 should 
not have mentioned him for this distinction 
alone (the highest which a poet can receive 
from the state), but for another circumstance ; 
1 mean his being the author of some of the 
finest sonnets in the language — at least so 
they appear to me ; and as this species of 
composition has the necessary advantage of 
being short (though it is also sometimes both 
" tedious and brief,") I will here repeat two 
or three of them, as treating pleasing subjects 
in a pleasing and philosophical way. 

Written in a blank leaf of Dug dale's Monasticon, 

'•' Deem not, devoid of elegance, the sage, 
By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguil'd, 
Of painful pedantry the poring child ; 
Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, 
Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage. 
Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smil'd 
On his lone hours ? Ingenuous views engage 
His thoughts, on themes imelassic falsely styl'd^ 
Intent. While cloister'd piety displays 



C 236 OS SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores 
New manners, and the pomp of elder days, 
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur'd stores. 
Not rough nor barren are the winding ways 
Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers." 

Sonnet. Written at Stonehenge. 
" Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle, 

Whether, by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore 
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore, 
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile, 
T' entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile : 
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore, 
Taught 'mid thy massy maze their mystic lore : 
Or Danish chiefs, enrich' d with savage spoil, 
To victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine, 
Rear'd the rude heap, or in thy hallow' d ground 
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line ; 
Or here those kings in solemn state were crown' d ; 
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin, 
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd." 

Nothing can be more admirable than the 
learning here displayed, or the inference from 
it, that it is of no use but as it leads to inte- 
resting thought and reflection. 

That written after seeing Wilton House is 
in the same style, but I prefer concluding 
with that to the river Lodon, which has a 
personal, as well as poetical, interest about it. 

" Ah ! what a weary race my feet have run, 
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crown'd, 
And thought my way was all through fairy ground, 
Beneath the azure sky and golden sun : 
When first my Muse to lisp her notes begun ! 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 237 

While pensive memory traces back the round 

Which fills the varied interval between % 

Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene 

Sweet native stream ! those skies and suns so pure 

No more return, to cheer my evening road ! 

Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure 

Nor useless all my vacant days have flow'd 

From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature, 

Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestow'd." 

I have thus gone through all the names of 
this period I could think of, but I find that 
there are others still waiting behind that I had 
never thought of. Here is a list of some of 
them — Pattison, Tickell, Hill, Somerville, 
Browne, Pitt, Wilkie, Dodsley, Shaw, Smart, 
Langhorne, Bruce, Greame, Glover, Lovi- 
bond, Penrose, Mickle, Jago, Scott, White- 
head, Jenyns, Logan, Cotton, Cunningham, 
and Blacklock. I think it will be best to let 
them pass and say nothing about them. It 
will be hard to persuade so many respectable 
persons that they are dull writers, and if we 
give them any praise, they will send others. 

But here comes one whose claims cannot 
be so easily set aside : they have been sanc- 
tioned by learning, hailed by genius, and 
hallowed by misfortune — 1 mean Chatterton. 
Yet I must say what I think of him, and that 
is not what is generally thought. I pass over 
the disputes between the learned antiquaries, 
Dr. Mills, Herbert Croft, and Dr. Knox, 



238 ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 

whether he was to be placed after Shakspeare 
and Dryden, or to come after Shakspeare 
alone. A living poet has borne a better testi- 
mony to him — 

iC I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, 
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride ; 
And him* who walked in glory and in joy 
Beside his plough along the mountain side." 

I am loth to put asunder whom so great an 
authority has joined together ; but I cannot 
find in Chatterton's works any thing so extra- 
ordinary as the age at which they were written. 
They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge, 
which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, 
but which would not have been so in a man 
of twenty. He did not shew extraordinary 
powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. 
Nor do I believe he would have written better 
had he lived. He knew this himself, or he 
would have lived. Great geniuses, like great 
kings, have too much to think of to kill them- 
selves ; for their mind to them also " a king- 
dom is. 5 ' With an unaccountable power 
coming over him at an unusual age, and with 
the youthful confidence it inspired, he per- 



* Burns. — These lines are taken from the introduction 
to Mr. Wordsworth's poem of the Leech-gatherer. 



ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, &C. 239 

formed wonders, and was walling to set a seal 
on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. 
He had done his best ; and, like another 
Empedocles, threw himself into iEtna, to 
ensure immortality. The brazen slippers alone 
remain ! — 



LECTURE VII. 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH 
BALLADS. 

I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion 
of the last Lecture, respecting Chatterton, 
should have given dissatisfaction to some per- 
sons, with whom I would willingly agree on 
all such matters. What I meant was less to 
call in question Chatterton's genius than to 
object to the common mode of estimating its 
magnitude by its prematureness. The lists 
of fame are not filled with the dates of births 
or deaths ; and the side-mark of the age at 
which they were done wears out in works 
destined for immortality. Had Chatterton 
really done more, we should have thought 
Jess of him, for our attention would then have 
been fixed on the excellence of the works 
themselves, instead of the singularity of the 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 941 

circumstances in which they are produced. 
But because he attained to the full powers of 
manhood at an early age, I do not see that 
he would have attained to more than those 
powers, had he lived to be a man. He was a 
prodigy, because in him the ordinary march of 
nature was violently precipitated; and it is there- 
fore inferred that he would have continued 
to hold on his course, " unslacked of motion. 5 ' 
On the contrary, who knows but he might 
have lived to be poet-laureat ? It is much 
better to let him remain as he was. Of his 
actual productions, any one may think as 
highly as he pleases ; I would only guard 
against adding to the account of his quantum 
meruit those possible productions by which 
the learned rhapsodists of his time raised his 
gigantic pretensions to an equality with those 
of Homer and Shakspeare. It is amusing to 
read some of these exaggerated descriptions, 
each rising above the other in extravagance. 
In Anderson's Life, we find that Mr. Warton 
speaks of him "as a prodigy of genius," as 
" a singular instance of prematurity of abili- 
ties :" that may be true enough, and Warton 
was at any rate a competent judge ; but Mr. 
Malone " believes him to have been the 
greatest genius that England has produced 
since the days of Shakspeare/' Dr. Gregory 

R 



242 OX BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

says, " he must rank, as a universal genius, 
above Dryden, and perhaps only second to 
Shakspeare." Mr. Herbert Croft is still more 
unqualified in his praises ; he asserts that 
i€ no such being, at any period of life, has 
ever been known, or possibly ever will be 
known. " He runs a parallel between Chatter- 
ton and Milton ; and asserts that " an army 
of Macedonian and Swedish mad butchers fly 
before him," meaning, I suppose, that Alex- 
ander the Great and Charles the Twelfth were 
nothing to him ; " nor/' he adds, " does my 
memory supply me with any human being, 
who, at such an age 5 with such advantages, has 
produced such compositions. Under the 
heathen mythology, superstition and admira- 
tion would have explained all, by bringing 
Apollo on earth ; nor would the God ever 
have descended with more credit to himself." 
— Chatterton's physiognomy would at least 
have enabled him to pass incognito. It is 
quite different from the look of timid wonder 
and delight with which Annibal Caracci has 
painted a young Apollo listening to the first 
sounds he draws from a Pan's pipe, under the 
tutelage of the old Silenus ! If Mr. Croft is 
sublime on the occasion, Dr. Knox is no less 
pathetic. " The testimony of Dr. Knox/' says 
Dr. Anderson, (essays, p. 144.) " does equal 
credit to the classical taste and amiable benevo- 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 243 

lence of the writer, and the genius and repu- 
tation of Chattel ton." " When I read," says 
the Doctor, " the researches of those learned 
antiquaries who have endeavoured to prove 
that the poems attributed to Rowley were 
really written by him, I observe many ingeni- 
ous remarks in confirmation of their opinion, 
which it would be tedious, if not difficult, to 
controvert.' 5 

Now this is so far from the mark that the 
whole controversy might have been settled by 
any one but the learned antiquaries themselves, 
who had the smallest share of their learning, 
from this single circumstance, that the poems 
read as smooth as any modern poems, if you 
read them as modern compositions ; and that 
you cannot read them, or make verse of them 
at all, if you pronounce or accent the words 
as they were spoken at the time when the 
poems were pretended to have been written. 
The whole secret of the imposture, which 
nothing but a deal of learned dust, raised by 
collecting and removing a great deal of learned 
rubbish, could have prevented our laborious 
critics from seeing through, lies on the face 
of it (to say nothing of the burlesque an 
which is scarcely disguised throughout) in the 
repetition of a few obsolete words, and in the 

mis-spelling of common ones, 

R 2 



244 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 



a 



No sooner/' proceeds the Doctor, " do 
I turn to the poems, than the labour of the 
antiquaries appears only waste of time ; and 
I am involuntarily forced to join in placing 
that laurel, which he seems so well to have 
deserved, on the brow of Chatterton. The 
poems bear so many marks of superior genius 
that they have deservedly excited the general 
attention of polite scholars, and are considered 
as the most remarkable productions in modern 
poetry. We have many instances of poetical 
eminence at an early age ; but neither Cowley, 
Milton, nor Pope, ever produced any thing 
while they were boys, which can justly be 
compared to the poems of Chatterton. The 
learned antiquaries do not indeed dispute 
their excellence. They extol it in the highest 
terms of applause. They raise their favourite 
Rowley to a rivalry with Homer : but they 
make the very merits of the works an argu- 
ment against their real author. l Is it possible/ 
say they, ' that a boy should produce composi- 
tions so beautiful and masterly V That a 
common boy should produce them is not 
possible," rejoins the Doctor; t€ but that they 
should be produced by a boy of an extraordi- 
nary genius, such as was that of Homer 
or Shakspeare, though a prodigy, is such a 
one as by no means exceeds the bounds of 
rational credibility/^ 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 245 

Now it does not appear that Shakspeare or 
Homer were such early prodigies ; so that by 
this reasoning he must take precedence of 
them too, as well as of Milton, Cowley, and 
Pope. The reverend and classical writer 
then breaks out into the following melancholy 
raptures : — 

" Unfortunate boy ! short and evil were thy 
days, but thy fame shall be immortal. Hadst 
thou been known to the munificent patrons of 

genius 

" Unfortunate boy ! poorly wast thou ac- 
commodated during thy short sojourning here 
among us* — rudely wast thou treated— sorely 
did thy feelings suffer from the scorn of the 
unworthy ; and there at last those who wish 
to rob thee of thy only meed, thy posthumous 
glory. Severe too are the censures of thy 
morals. In the gloomy moments of despon- 
dency, I fear thou hast uttered impious and 
blasphemous thoughts. But let thy more 
rigid censors reflect that thou wast literally 
and strictly but a boy. Let many of thy bit- 
terest enemies reflect what were their own 
religious principles, and whether they had 
any, at the age of fourteen, fifteen, and six- 
teen. Surely it is a severe and an unjust 
surmise that thou wouldst probably have 
ended thy life as a victim to the laws, if thou 
hadst not ended it as thou didst. 3 ' 



246 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

Enough, enough, of the learned antiquaries, 
and of the classical and benevolent testimony 
of Dr. Knox. Chatterton was, indeed, badly 
enough off; but he was at least saved from 
the pain and shame of reading this woful 
lamentation over fallen genius, which circu- 
lates, splendidly bound, in the fourteenth 
edition, while he is a prey to worms. As to 
those who are really capable of admiring 
Chatterton's genius, or of feeling an interest 
in his fate, I would only say that I never 
heard any one speak of any one of his works 
as if it were an old well-known favourite, and 
had become a faith and a religion in his mind. 
it is his name, his youth, and what he might 
have lived to have done, that excite our 
wonder and admiration. He has the same 
sort of posthumous fame that an actor 
of the last age has — an abstracted repu- 
tation which is independent of any thing we 
know f of his works. The admirers of Collins 
never think of him without recalling to their 
minds his Ode on the Evening, or on the 
Poetical Character. Graves Elegy, and his 
popularity, are identified together, and inse- 
parable even in imagination. It is the same 
with respect to Burns : when you speak of 
him as a poet, you mean his works, his Tarn 
o' Shanter, or his Cotter's Saturday Night. 



OX BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 24? 

But the enthusiasts for Chatterton, if you ask 
for the proofs of his extraordinary genius, are 
obliged to turn to the volume, and perhaps 
find there what they seek ; but it is not in 
their minds ; and it is of that I spoke. 

The Minstrel's song in iElla is, I think, 
the best. 

u ! synge untoe my roundelaie, 

O ! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee, 
Daunce ne moe atte hallie daie, 
Lycke a rennynge ryver bee. 

Mie love ys dedde, 

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, 

AI under the wyllowe-tree. 

Black hys cryne as the wyntere nyght, 
Whyte hys rode as the sommer snowe, 
Kodde hys face as the mornynge lyghte, 
Cale he lyes ynne the grave belowe. 

Mie love ys dedde, 

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, 

Al under the wyllowe-tree. 

Swote hys tongue as the throstles note, 
Quycke ynne daunce as thought cann bee, 
Defte his taboure, codgelle stote, 
! hee lys bie the wyllowe-tree, 

Mie love ys dedde, 

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, 

Al under the wyllowe-tree. 

Harke ! the ravenne flappes hys wynge, 
In the briered dell belowe ; 
Harke ! the dethe-owle loude dothe synge, 
To the nyghte-mares as theie goe. 

Mie love ys dedde. 

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, 

Al under the wyllowe-tree. 



248 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

See .' the whyte moone sheenes onne hie ; 
Whyterre ys mie true loves shroude •, 
Whyterre yanne the mornynge skie, 
"Whyterre yanne the evenynge cloude. 

Mie love ys dedde, 

Gone to hys deathe-bedde, 

Al under the wyllowe-tree. 

Heere, upon mie true loves grave, 
Schalle the baren fleurs be layde, 
Ne one hallie seyncte to save 
Al the celness of a mayde. 

Mie love ys dedde, 

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, 

Al under the wyllowe-tree. 

Wythe mie hondes I'll dent the brieres 
Hounde hys hallie corse to gre, 
Ouphante fairies, lyghte your fyres, 
Heere mie boddie stille schalle bee. 

Mie love ys dedde, 

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, 

Al under the wyllowe-tree. 

Comme, wythe acorne-coppe and thorne, 
Drayne my hartys blodde awaie ; 
Lyfe and all yttes goode I scorne, 
Daunce bie nete, or feaste by daie. 

Mie love ys dedde, 

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde, 

Al under the wyllowe-tree. 

Water wytches, crownede wythe reytes, 
Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde. 
I die ; I comme ; mie true love waytes. 
Thos the damselle spake, and dyed." 

To proceed to the more immediate subject 
of the present Lecture, the character and 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 249 

writings of Burns. — Shakspeare says of some 
one, that " he was like a man made after 
supper of a cheese-paring. 5 ' Burns, the poet 
was not such a man. He had a strong mind, 
and a strong body, the fellow to it. He had 
a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his 
bosom — you can almost hear it throb. Some 
one said, that if you had shaken hands with 
him, his hand would have burnt yours. The 
gods, indeed, " made him poetical ;" but 
nature had a hand in him first. His heart 
was in the right place. He did not " create 
a soul under the ribs of death," by tinkling 
siren sounds, or by piling up centos of poetic 
diction; but for the artificial flowers of poetry, 
he plucked the mountain-daisy under his feet; 
and a field-mouse, hurrying from its ruined 
dwelling, could inspire him with the senti- 
ments of terror and pity. He held the plough 
or the pen with the same firm, manly grasp ; 
nor did he cut out poetry as we cut out watch- 
papers, with finical dexterity, nor from the 
same flimsy materials. Burns was not like 
Shakspeare in the range of his genius ; but 
there is something of the same magnanimity, 
directness, and unaffected character about 
him. He was not a sickly sentimentalist, a 
namby-pamby poet, a mincing metre ballad- 
monger, any more than Shakspeare. He 



250 ON BURXs, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

would as soon hear " a brazen candlestick 
tuned, or a dry wheel grate on the axletree.' 
He was as much of a man — not a twentieth 
part as much of a poet — as Shakspeare. With 
but little of his imagination or inventive 
power, he had the same life of mind : within 
the narrow circle of personal feeling or do- 
mestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows 
as healthily and vigorously. He had an eye 
to see ; a heart to feel : — no more. His pic* 
tures of good fellowship, of social glee, of 
quaint humour, are equal to any thing ; they 
come up to nature, and they cannot go beyond. 
The sly jest collected in his laughing eye at 
the sight of the grotesque and ludicrous in 
manners — the large tear rolled down his 
manly cheek at the sight of another's distress. 
He has made us as well acquainted with him- 
self as it is possible to be ; has let out the 
honest impulses of his native disposition, the 
unequal conflict of the passions in his breast, 
with the same frankness and truth of descrip- 
tion. His strength is not greater than his 
weakness : his virtues were greater than his 
vices. His virtues belonged to his genius : 
his vices to his situation, which did not cor- 
respond to his genius. 

It has been usual to attack Burns's moral 
character, and the moral tendency of his 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 251 

writings at the same time ; and Mr. Words- 
worth, in a letter to Mr. Gray, Master of the 
High School at Edinburgh, in attempting to 
defend, has only laid him open to a more seri- 
ous and unheard-of responsibility. Mr. Gray 
might very well have sent him back, in return 
for his epistle, the answer of Holofernes in 
Love's Labour Lost : — " Via goodman Dull, 
thou hast spoken no word all this while. " 
The author of this performance, which is as 
weak in effect as it is pompous in pretension, 
shows a great dislike of Robespierre, Buona- 
parte, and of Mr. Jeffrey, whom he, by some 
unaccountable fatality, classes together as the 
three most formidable enemies of the human 
race that have appeared in his (Mr. Words- 
worth's) remembrance ; but he betrays very 
little liking to Burns. He is, indeed, anxious 
to get him out of the unhallowed clutches of 
the Edinburgh Reviewers (as a mere matter 
of poetical privilege), only to bring him before 
a graver and higher tribunal, which is his 
own ; and, after repeating and insinuating 
ponderous charges against him, shakes his 
head, and declines giving any opinion in so 
tremendous a case ; so that, though the judg- 
ment of the former critic is set aside, poor 
Burns remains just where he was, and nobody 
gains any thing by the cause but Mr. Words- 



252 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

worth, in an increasing opinion of his own 
wisdom and purity. " Out upon this half- 
faced fellowship I 39 The author of the Lyri- 
cal Ballads has thus missed a fine opportunity 
of doing Burns justice and himself honour. 
He might have shown himself a philosophical 
prose-writer, as well as a philosophical poet. 
He might have offered as amiable and as 
gallant a defence of the Muses as my uncle 
Toby, in the honest simplicity of his heart, 
did of the army. He might have said at once, 
instead of making a parcel of wry faces over 
the matter, that Burns had written Tarn o 3 
Shanter, and that that alone was enough ; that 
he could hardly have described the excesses of 
mad, hairbrained, roaring mirth, and convivial 
indulgence, which are the soul of it, if he 
himself had not " drunk full ofter of the tun 
than of the well" — unless " the act and 
practique part of life had been the mistress of 
his theorique." Mr. Wordsworth might have 
quoted such lines as — 

" The landlady and Tam grew gracious, 

Wi' favours, secret, sweet, and precious ;" — 



or, 



Care, mad to see a man so happy, 

E'en drowned himself amang the nappy ;" — 



and fairly confessed that he could not have 



OX BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 253 

written such lines from a want of proper 
habits and previous sympathy ; and that, till 
some great puritanical genius should arise 
to do these things equally w r ell without any 
knowledge of them, the world might forgive 
Burns the injuries he had done his health 
and fortune in his poetical apprenticeship to 
experience, for the pleasure he had afforded 
them. Instead of this, Mr. Wordsworth hints 
that, with different personal habits and greater 
strength of mind, Burns would have written 
differently, and almost as well as he does. He 
might have taken that line of Gay's, 

" The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets," — 

and applied it in all its force and pathos to t^' 
poetical character. He might have argued th .* 
poets are men of genius, and that a man of 
genius is not a machine ; that they live in a 
state of intellectual intoxication, and that it is 
too much to expect them to be distinguished 
by peculiar sang froid, circumspection, and 
sobriety. Poets are by nature men of stronger 
imagination and keener sensibilities than others; 
and it is a contradiction to suppose them at 
the same time governed only by the cool, dry, 
calculating dictates of reason and foresight. 
Mr. Wordsworth might have ascertained the 
boundaries that part the provinces of reason 



254 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

and imagination : — that it is the business of 
the understanding to exhibit things in their 
relative proportions and ultimate consequences 
— of the imagination to insist on their imme- 
diate impressions, and to indulge their strongest 
impulses; but it is the poet's office to pamper 
the imagination of his readers and his own 
with the extremes of present ecstacy or agony, 
to snatch the swift-winged golden minutes, 
the torturing hour, and to banish the dull, 
prosaic, monotonous realities of life, both from 
his thoughts and from his practice. Mr. 
Wordsworth might have shown how it is that 
all men of genius, or of originality and inde- 
pendence of mind, are liable to practical 
errors, from the very confidence their superi- 
ority inspires, which makes them fly in the 
face of custom and prejudice, always rashly, 
sometimes unjustly ; for, after all, custom and 
prejudice are not without foundation in truth 
and reason, and no one individual is a match 
for the world in power, very few in knowledge. 
The world may altogether be set down as 
older and wiser than any single person in it. 

Again, our philosophical letter-writer might 
have enlarged on the temptations to which 
Burns was exposed from his struggles with 
fortune and the uncertainty of his fate. He 
might have shown how a poet, not born to 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. c 2oo 

wealth or title, was kept in a constant state of 
feverish anxiety with respect to his fame and 
the means of a precarious livelihood : that, 
u from being chilled with poverty, steeped in 
contempt, he had passed into the sunshine of 
fortune, and was lifted to the very pinnacle of 
public favour ; " yet even there could not 
count on the continuance of success, but was, 
" like the giddy sailor on the mast, ready 
with every blast to topple down into the fatal 
bowels of the deep V He might have traced 
his habit of ale-house tippling to the last long 
precious draught of his favourite usquebaugh, 
which he took in the prospect of bidding 
farewel for ever to his native land ; and his 
conjugal infidelities to his first disappointment 
in love, which would not have happened to 
him if he had been born to a small estate in 
land, or bred up behind a counter ! 

Lastly, Mr. Wordsworth might have shown 
the incompatibility between the Muses and 
the Excise, which never agreed well together, 
or met in one seat, till they were unaccount- 
ably reconciled on Rydal Mount. He must 
know (no man better) the distraction created 
by the opposite calls of business and of fancy, 
the torment of extents, the plague of receipts 
laid in order or mislaid, the disagreeableness 
of exacting penalties or paying the forfeiture ; 



256 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

and how all this (together with the broaching 
of casks and the splashing of beer-barrels) 
must have preyed upon a mind like Burns', 
with more than his natural sensibility and none 
of his acquired firmness. 

Mr. Coleridge, alluding to this circumstance 
of the promotion of the Scottish Bard to be 
" a gauger of ale-firkins/' in a poetical epistle 
to his friend Charles Lamb, calls upon him, in 
a burst of heart-felt indignation, to gather a 
wreath of henbane, nettles, and nightshade, 

" To twine 



The illustrious brow of Scotch nobility." 

If, indeed, Mr. Lamb had undertaken to write 
a letter in defence of Burns, how different 
would it have been from this of Mr. Words- 
worth's ! How much better than I can even 
imagine it to have been done ! 

It is hardly reasonable to look for a hearty 
or genuine defence of Burns from the pen 
of Mr. Wordsworth ; for there is no common 
link of sympathy between them. Nothing 
can be more different or hostile than the spirit 
of their poetry. Mr. Wordsworth's poetry is 
the poetry of mere sentiment and pensive 
contemplation : Burns's is a very highly sub- 
limated essence of animal existence. With 
Burns, " self-love and social are the same" — 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 257 

" And we'll tak a cup of kindness yet, 
For auld lang syne." 

Mr. Wordsworth is " himself alone," a recluse 
philosopher, or a reluctant spectator of the 
scenes of many-coloured life ; moralising on 
them, not describing, not entering into them. 
Robert Burns has exerted all the vigour of 
his mind, all the happiness of his nature, in 
exalting the pleasures of wine, of love, and 
good fellowship : but in Mr. Wordsworth 
there is a total disunion and divorce of the 
faculties of the mind from those of the body : 
the banns are forbid, or a separation is au- 
sterely pronounced from bed and board — 
a mensd et tkoro. From the Lyrical Ballads, 
it does not appear that men eat or drink, 
marry or are given in marriage. If we lived 
by every sentiment that proceeded out of 
mouths, and not by bread or wine, or if the 
species were continued like trees (to borrow 
an expression from the great Sir Thomas 
Brown), Mr. Wordsworth's poetry would be 
just as good as ever. It is not so with Burns: 
he is " famous for the keeping it up," and 
in his verse is ever fresh and gay. For this, 
it seems, he has fallen under the displeasure 
of the Edinburgh Reviewers, and the still 
more formidable patronage of Mr. Words- 
worth's pen. 

s 



258 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

" This, this was the unkindest cut of all." 

I was going to give some extracts out of 
this composition in support of what I have 
said, but I find them too tedious. Indeed (if 
I may be allowed to speak my whole mind, 
under correction) Mr. Wordsworth could not 
be in any way expected to tolerate or give a 
favourable interpretation to Burns's constitu- 
tional foibles — even his best virtues are not 
good enough for him. He is repelled and 
driven back into himself, not less by the worth 
than by the faults of others. His taste is as 
exclusive and repugnant as his genius. It is 
because so few things give him pleasure that 
he gives pleasure to so few people. It is not 
every one who can perceive the sublimity of a 
daisy, or the pathos to be extracted from a 
withered thorn ! 

To proceed from B urns' s patrons to his 
poetry, than which no two things can be more 
different. His " Twa Dogs " is a very spirited 
piece of description, both as it respects the 
animal and human creation, and conveys a 
very vivid idea of the manners both of high 
and low life. The burlesque panegyric of the 
first dog, 

" His locked, lettered, braw brass collar 
Show'd him the gentleman and scholar,"— 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. S>59 

reminds one of Launce's account of his dog 
Crabbe, where he is said, as an instance of his 
being in the way of promotion, " to have got 
among three or four gentleman-like dogs under 
the Duke's table/' The "Halloween" is 
the most striking and picturesque description 
of local customs and scenery. The Brigs of 
Ayr, the Address to a Haggis, Scotch Drink, 
and innumerable others, are, however, full of 
the same kind of characteristic and comic 
painting. But his masterpiece in this way is 
his Tarn o J Shanter. I shall give the begin- 
ning of it, but I am afraid I shall hardly know 
when to leave off. 

" When chapman billies leave the street, 
And drouthy neebours neebours meet, 
As market-days are wearing late, 
And folk begin to tak' the gate ; 
While we sit bousing at the nappy, 
And getting fou and unco happy, 
We think na on the lang Scots miles, 
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, 
That lie between us and our hame, 
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame, 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm, 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 

This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter, 
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter ; 
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses 
For honest men and bonny lasses). 

O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise, 
As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice ! 
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, 
A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum ; 

S % 



260 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

That frae November till October 

Ae market-day thou was na sober ; 

That ilka melder, wi' the miller, 

Thou sat as Jang as thou had siller ; 

That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on, 

The smith and thee gat roaring fou on ; 

That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday, 

Thou drank wi' Kirton Jean till Monday — 

She prophesy'd, that, late or soon, 

Thou wad be found deep drown'd in Dooii ; 

Or catch't wi' warlocks in the mirk, 

By Alioway's auld haunted kirk. 

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet, 
To think how mony counsels sweet, 
How mony lengthen'd, sage advices, 
The husband frae the wife despises ! 

But to our tale : Ae market night, 
Tarn had got planted unco right 
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, 
Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely ; 
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny, 
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony ; 
Tarn lo'ed him like a vera brither ; 
They had been fou for weeks thegither. 
The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter, 
And aye the ale was growing better : 
The landlady and Tarn grew gracious 
Wi' favours secret, sweet, and precious ; 
The Souter tauld his queerest stories ; 
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus : 
The storm without might rair and rustle. 
Tarn did na mind the storm a whistle. 

Care, mad to see a man sae happy, 
E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy ; 
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure, 
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure : 
Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious, 
O'er a' the ills of life victorious ! 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 2tfl 

But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flow'r — its bloom is shed ; 
Or like the snow, falls in the river, 
A moment white — then melts for ever ; 
Or like the Borealis race, 
That flit ere you can point their place ; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form, 
Evanishing amid the storm. — 
Nae man can tether time or tide, 
The hour approaches, Tarn maun ride ; 
That hour o' night's black arch the key-stane, 
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in, 
And sic a night he taks the road in, 
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. 

The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ; 
The rattling showers rose on the blast, 
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd, 
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd : 
That night a child might understand 
The Deil had business on his hand. 

Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg, 
A better never lifted leg, 
Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, 
Despising wind, and rain, and fire ; 
Whiles haulding fast his gude blue bonnet ; 
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet ; 
Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares, 
Lest bogles catch him unawares ; 
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, 
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. — 

By this time Tam was cross the ford, 
Whare in the snaw, the chapman smoor'd ; 
And past the birks and meikle stane, 
Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; 
And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, 
Where hunters fand the murder'd bairn ; 
And near the thorn, aboon the well, 



c 262 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. — 
Before him Doon pours all his floods ; 
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods ; 
The lightnings flash from pole to pole ; 
Near and more near the thunders roll : 
Whan, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, 
Kirk- Alloway seem'd in a bleeze ; 
Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing ; 
And loud resounded mirth and dancing. 

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn ! 
What dangers thou canst make us scorn ! 
Wi J Tippenny, we fear nae evil, 
Wi' Usqueba, we'll face the devil ! 
The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle, 
Fair play, he car'd na de'ils a boddle. 
But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd, 
Till, by the heel and hand admonish'd, 
She ventur'd forward on the light, 
And, wow ! Tarn saw an unco sight ! 
Warlocks and witches in a dance, 
Nae light cotillion new frae France, 
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, 
Put life and mettle in their heels. 
As winnock-bunker, in the east, 
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast ; 
A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large, 
To gie them music was his charge ; 
He screw' d the pipes, and gart them skirl, 
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. — 
Coffins stood round like open presses, 
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses ; 
And, by some devilish cantrip slight, 
Each in its cauld hand held a light — 
By which heroic Tarn was able 
To note upon the haly table 
A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns ; 
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns ; 



OX BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS, 263 

A thief, new cutted frae a rape, 
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape ; 
Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red rusted ; 
Five scimitars, wi : murder crusted ; 
A garter, which a babe had strangled ; 
A knife, a father's throat had mangled, 
Whom his ain son o' life bereft, 
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft ; 
"Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu', 
Which e'en to name wad be unlawfu'. 

As Tammie glowr'd, amaz'd and curious, 
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious : 
The Piper loud and louder blew ; 
The dancers quick and quicker flew ; 
They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit, 
Till ilka Carlin swat and reekit, 
And coost her duddies to the wark, 
And linket at it in her sark I 

2s ow Tam, O Tarn ! had they been queans 
A' plump and strapping in their teens ; 
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen, 
Been snaw-white seventeen hundred linen ! 
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, 
That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair, 
I wad hae gi'en them aff my hurdies 5 
For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies ! 

But wither' d beldams, auld and droll, 
Higwoodie hags wad spean a foal, 
Louping and flinging on a crummock, 
I wonder did na turn thy stomach. 

But Tam ken'd what was what fu' brawly, 
There was ae winsome wench and waly, 
That night enlisted in the core, 
(Lang after ken'd on Carrick shore ; 
For mony a beast to dead she shot, 
And perish'd mony a bonnie boat. 
And shook baith meikle corn and bear, 



2(>4 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

And kept the country-side in fear — ) 
Her cutty sark o' Paisely ham, 
That while a lassie she had worn, 
In longitude tho' sorely scanty, 
It was her best, and she was vaunty. — 
Ah ! little ken'd thy reverend grannie, 
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, 
Wi' twa pund Scots ('twas a' her riches), 
Wad ever grac'd a dance of witches ! 

But here my Muse her wing maun cour ; 
Sic flights are far beyond her power : 
To sing how Nannie lap and flang, 
(A souple jade she was, and Strang) 
And how Tarn stood like ane bewitch'd, 
And thought his very een enrich'd ; 
Ev'n Satan glowr'd and fidg'd fu' fain, 
Andhotch't, and blew wi' might and main ; 
Till first ae caper, syne anither, 
Tarn tint his reason a' thegither, 
And roars out, " Weel done, Cutty Sark !" 
And in an instant all was dark ; 
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, 
When out the hellish legion sallied. 

As bees biz out wi' angry fyke 
When plundering herds assail their byke ; 
As open pussie's mortal foes, 
When, pop ! she starts before their nose ; 
As eager rins the market-crowd, 
When "Catch the thief!" resounds aloud; 
So Maggie rins — the witches follow, 
Wi' mony an eldritch skreech and hollow, 

Ah, Tarn ! ah, Tarn ! thou'll get thy fairin' ! 
In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin' ! 
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin' ! 
Kate soon will be a waefu' woman ! 
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 
And win the key-stane o' the brig ; 



ON BURNS, AND TOE OLD BALLADS. 265 

There, at them thou thy tail may toss, 
A running stream they dare na cross ; 
But ere the key-stane she could make, 
The fient a tail she had to shake ! 
For Nannie, far before the rest, 
Hard upon noble Maggie prest, 
And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle : 
But little wist she Maggie's mettle— 
Ae spring brought aff her master hale, 
But left behind her ain grey tail : 
The Carlin claught her by the rump, 
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. 

Now, wha this tale of truth shall read, 
Ilk man and mother's son tak heed : 
Whane'er to drink you are inclin'd, 
Or Cutty Sarks rin in your mind, 
Think, ye may buy the joys owre dear ; 
Remember Tarn o' Shanter's mare." 

Burns has given the extremes of licentious 
eccentricity and convivial enjoyment, in the 
story of this scape-grace, and of patriarchal 
simplicity and gravity in describing the old 
national character of the Scottish peasantry. 
The Cotter's Saturday Night is a noble and 
pathetic picture of human manners, mingled 
with a fine religious awe. It comes over the 
mind like a slow and solemn strain of music. 
The soul of the poet aspires from this scene 
of low-thoughted care, and reposes, in trem- 
bling hope, on " the bosom of its Father and 
its God." Hardly any thing can be more 
touching than the following stanzas, for in- 



266 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

stance, whether as thev describe human in- 
terests, or breathe a lofty devotional spirit. 

" The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes, 
This night his weekly moil is at an end, 
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, 

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. 

At length his lonely cot appears in view, 

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 
Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through 

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise and glee. 
His wee-bit ingle, blinkin bonilie, 

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, 
The lisping infant, prattling on his knee, 

Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, 
And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil. 

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in 

At service out, amang the farmers roun', 
Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin 

A cannie errand to a neebor town ; 
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, 

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, 
Comes hame, perhaps, to show a braw new gown, 

Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, 
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

Wi' joy unfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet, 

And each for other's welfare kindly spiers ; 
The social hours, swift- wing'd, unnotic'd fleet ; 

Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears : 
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ; 

Anticipation forward points the view ; 
The mither, wi' her needle and her shears, 

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new ; 
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 26*7 

But, hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; 

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, 
Tells how a neebor lad cam o'er the moor, 

To do some errands, and convoy her hame. 
The wily mother sees the conscious flame 

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; 
With heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name, 

While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak ; 
Weelpleas'd the motherhears it's naewild, worthless rake. 

Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ; 

A strappan youth ; he taks the mother's eye ; 
Blithe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en ; 

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. 
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, 

But blate an' laithfu', scarce can weel behave ; 
The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy 

What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave ; 
Weel-pieas'd to think her bairn's respected like the lave. 

But now the supper crowns their simple boards 

The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food : 
The soupe their only hawkie does afford, 

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood : 
The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, 

To grace the lad, her weel-hained kebbuck, fell, 
An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid ; 

The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, 
How 'twas a towmond auld, sin' lint was i' the bell. 

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, 

They, round the ingle, form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace, 

The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride : 
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 

His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare ; 
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 

He wales a portion wi' judicious care ; 
And M Let us worship God !" he says, with solemn air. 



26S ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim : 
Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise, 

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name ; 
Or noble Elgin beets the heav'nward flame, 

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : 
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame ; 

The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise ; 
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.'' 

Burns's poetical epistles to his friends are 
admirable, whether for the touches of satire, 
the painting of character, or the sincerity of 
friendship they display. Those to Captain 
Grose, and to Davie, a brother poet, are 
among the best : they are " the true pathos 
and sublime of human life. " His prose- 
letters are sometimes tinctured with affecta- 
tion. They seem written by a man who has 
been admired for his wit, and is expected on 
all occasions to shine. Those in which he 
expresses his ideas of natural beauty in refer- 
ence to Alison's Essay on Taste, and advo- 
cates the keeping up the remembrances of 
old customs and seasons, are the most power- 
fully written. His English serious odes and 
moral stanzas are, in general, failures, such as 
The Lament, Man was made to Mourn, &c. ; 
nor do I much admire his " Scots wha hae 
wi' Wallace bled." In this strain of didactic 
or sentimental moralising, the lines to Glen- 
cairn are the most happy and impressive. 



OX BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 269 

His imitations of the old humorous ballad 
style of Ferguson's songs are no whit inferior 
to the admirable originals, such as " John 
Anderson, my Joe," and many more. But of 
all his productions, the pathetic and serious 
love-songs which he has left behind him, in 
the manner of the old ballads, are perhaps 
those which take the deepest and most lasting- 
hold of the mind. Such are the lines to Mary 
Morison, and those entitled Jessy. 

" Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear- 
Here's a health to ane I lo'e dear — 

Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, 
And soft as their parting tear — Jessy ! 

Altho' thou maun never be mine, 

Altho' even hope is denied ; 
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing 

Than aught in the world beside — Jessy !" 

The conclusion of the other is as follows : 

" Yestreen, when to the trembling string 

The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
To thee my fancy took its wing, 

I sat, but neither heard nor saw. 
Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, 

And yon the toast of a' the town, 
I sighed, and said among them a', 

Ye are na Mary Morison." 

That beginning, " Oh gin my love were a 
bonny red rose," is a piece of rich and fan- 
tastic description. One would think that 



270 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

nothing could surpass these in beauty of 
expression, and in true pathos : and nothing 
does or can, but some of the old Scotch 
ballads themselves. There is in them a still 
more original cast of thought, a more romantic 
imagery — the thistle's glittering down, the 
gilliflower on the old garden- wall, the horse- 
man's silver bells, the hawk on its perch — 
a closer intimacy with nature, a firmer reli- 
ance on it, as the only stock of wealth which 
the mind has to resort to, a more infantine 
simplicity of manners, a greater strength of 
affection, hopes longer cherished and longer 
deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly 
heave, and " thoughts that often lie too deep 
for tears/' We seem to feel that those who 
wrote and sung them (the early minstrels) 
lived in the open air, wandering on from 
place to place with restless feet and thoughts, 
and lending an ever-open ear to the fearful 
accidents of war or love, floating on the breath 
of old tradition or common fame, and moving 
the strings of their harp with sounds that sank 
into a nation's heart. How fine an illustra- 
tion of this is that passage in Don Quixote, 
where the knight and Sancho, going in search 
of Dulcinea, inquire their way of the country- 
man, who was driving his mules to plough 
before break of day, " singing the ancient 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 271 

ballad of Roncesvalles.'* Sir Thomas Over- 
bury describes his country girl as still accom- 
panied with fragments of old songs. One of 
the best and most striking descriptions of the 
effects of this mixture of national poetry and 
music is to be found in one of the letters of 
Archbishop Herring, giving an account of a 
confirmation-tour in the mountains of Wales. 

" That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, 
for we were to mount a rock, and in many places of the 
road, over natural stairs of stone. I submitted to this, 
which they told me was but a taste of the country, and to 
prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse 
things did not come that morning, for we dined soon after 
out of our own wallets; and, though our inn stood in a 
place of the most frightful solitude, and the best formed 
for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the 
world, yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the 
thing gave me spirits, and the air gave me appetite much 
keener than the knife I ate with. We had our music too ; 
for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group 
of figures that Hogarth would have given any price for. 
The harper was in his true place and attitude ; a man and 
woman stood before him, singing to his instrument wildly, 
but not disagreeably ; a little dirty child was playing with 
the bottom of the harp ; a woman in a sick night-cap hang- 
ing over the stairs ; a boy with crutches, fixed in a staring 
attention, and a girl carding wool in the chimney, and rock- 
ing a cradle with her naked feet, interrupted in her business 
by the charms of the music ; all ragged and dirt} r , and ail 
silently attentive. These figures gave us a most entertain- 
ing picture, and would please you or any man of observa- 
tion ; and one reflection gave me a particular comfort, that 
the assembly before us demonstrated that even here the 



272 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

influential sun warmed poor mortals, and inspired them 
with love and music." 

I could wish that Mr. Wilkie had been recom- 
mended to take this group as the subject of his 
admirable pencil ; he has painted a picture of 
Bathsheba, instead. 

In speaking of the old Scotch ballads, I 
need do no more than mention the name of 
Auld Robin Gray. The effect of reading 
this old ballad is as if all our hopes and fears 
hung upon the last fibre of the heart, and we 
felt that giving way. What silence, what 
loneliness, what leisure for grief and despair ! 

" My father pressed me sair, 

Though my mother did na' speak ; 
But she looked in my face 

Till my heart was like to break." 

The irksomeness of the situations, the sense 
of painful dependence, is excessive ; and yet 
the sentiment of deep-rooted, patient affection 
triumphs over all, and is the only impression 
that remains. Lady Ann BothwelPs Lament 
is not, I think, quite equal to the lines be- 
ginning — 

" waly, waly, up the bank, 

And waly, waly, down the brae, 
And waly, waly, yon burn side, 

Where I and my love wont to gae. 
I leant my back unto an aik, 

I thought it was a trusty tree ; 



ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. $73 

But first it bow'd, and syne it brak, 
Sae my true-love's forsaken me. 

O waly, waly, love is bonny, 

A little time while it is new ; 
But when it's auld, it waxeth cauld. 

And fades awa' like the morning dew. 
Whan cockle-shells turn siller bells, 

And muscles grow on every tree, 
Whan frost and snaw sail warm us aw, 

Then sail my love prove true to me. 

Now Arthur seat sail be my bed, 

The sheets sail ne'er be fyld by me : 
Saint Anton's well sail be my drink, 

Since my true-love's forsaken me. 
Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw, 

And shake the green leaves afF the tree ? 
O gentle death, whan wilt thou cum 

And tak' a life that wearies me ? 

'Tis not the frost that freezes sae, 

Nor blawing snaw's inclemencie, 
'Tis not sic cauld, that makes me cry, 

But my love's heart grown cauld to me. 
Whan we came in by Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see, 
My love was clad in black velvet, 

And I myself in cramasie. 

But had I wist, before I kist, 

That love had been sae hard to win ; 
I'd lockt my heart in case of gowd, 

And pinn'd it with a siller pin. 
And oh ! if my poor babe were born, 

And set upon the nurse's knee, 
And I mysel in the cold grave ! 

Since my true-love's forsaken me." 



2/4 ON BURNS, AND THE OLD BALLADS. 

The finest modern imitation of this style is 
the Braes of Yarrow ; and perhaps the finest 
subject for a story of the same kind, in any 
modern book, is that told in Turner's History 
of England, of a Mahometan woman, who, 
having fallen in love with an English merchant, 
the father of Thomas a Becket, followed him 
all the way to England, knowing only the 
word London, and the name of her lover, 
Gilbert. 

But to have done with this, which is rather 
too serious a subject. — The old English ballads 
are of a gayer and more lively turn. They 
are adventurous and romantic ; but they relate 
chiefly to good living and good fellowship, 
to drinking and hunting scenes. Robin Hood 
is the chief of these, and he still, in imagi- 
nation, haunts Sherwood Forest. The archers 
green glimmer under the waving branches ; 
the print on the grass remains where they have 
just finished their noontide meal under the 
green- wood tree ; and the echo of their bugle- 
horn and twanging bows resounds through the 
tangled mazes of the forest, as the tall slim 
deer glances startled by. 

" The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good 
The grass beneath them now is dimly green : 
Are they deserted all ? Is no young mien, 
With loose-slung bugle, met within the wood ? 



ON BURNS,, AND THE OLD BALLADS. X/Z 

No arrow found — foil'd of its antler'd food — 

Struck in the oak's rude side ? — Is there nought seen 
To mark the revelries which there have been, 

In the sweet days of merry Robin Hood ? 

Go there with summer, and with evening — go 

In the soft shadows, like some wand'ring man — 
And thou shalt far amid the forest know 

The archer-men in green, with belt and bow, 
Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl, and swan, 
With Robin at their head, and Marian."* 



Sonnet on Sherwood Forest, by J. H. Reynolds. 



T L Z 



LECTURE VIII. 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 

" No more of talk where God or Angel guest 
With man, as with his friend, familiar us'd 
To sit indulgent."—^ 

Genius is the heir of fame ; but the hard 
condition on which the bright reversion must 
be earned is the loss of life. Fame is the 
recompense not of the living, but of the dead. 
The temple of fame stands upon the grave : 
the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled 
from the ashes of great men. Fame itself is 
immortal, but it is not begot till the breath 
of genius is extinguished. For fame is not 
popularity, the shout of the multitude, the 
idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the sooth- 
ing flattery of favour or of friendship ; but it 
is the spirit of a man surviving himself in the 
minds and thoughts of other men, undying 
and imperishable. It is the power which the 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 2/7 

intellect exercises over the intellect, and the 
lasting homage which is paid to it, as such, 
independently of time and circumstances, 
purified from partiality and evil-speaking. — 
Fame is the sound which the stream of high 
thoughts, carried down to future ages, makes 
as it flows — deep, distant, murmuring ever- 
more like the waters of the mighty ocean. 
He who has ears truly touched to this music 
is in a manner deaf to the voice of popularity. 
The love of fame differs from mere vanity in 
this, — that the one is immediate and personal, 
the other ideal and abstracted. It is not the 
direct and gross homage paid to himself, that 
the lover of true fame seeks or is proud of; 
but the indirect and pure homage paid to the 
eternal forms of truth and beauty as they are 
reflected in his mind, that gives him confidence 
and hope. The love of nature is the first 
thing in the mind of the true poet : the admi- 
ration of himself the last. A man of genius 
cannot well be a coxcomb ; for his mind is 
too full of other things to be much occupied 
with his own person. He who is conscious 
of great pow T ers in himself has also a high 
standard of excellence with which to compare 
his efforts : he appeals also to a test and 
judge of merit, which is the highest, but 
which is too remote, grave, and impartial, to 



278 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

flatter his self-love extravagantly, or puff him 
up with intolerable and vain conceit. This, 
indeed, is one test of genius and of real great- 
ness of mind, whether a man can wait pa- 
tiently and calmly for the award of posterity, 
satisfied with the unwearied exercise of his 
faculties, retired within the sanctuary of his 
own thoughts ; or whether he is eager to 
forestal his own immortality, and mortgage it 
for a newspaper puff. He who thinks much 
of himself will be in danger of being for- 
gotten by the rest of the world : he who is 
always trying to lay violent hands on reputa- 
tion will not secure the best and most lasting. 
If the restless candidate for praise takes no 
pleasure, no sincere and heartfelt delight in 
his works, but as they are admired and ap- 
plauded by others, what should others see in 
them to admire or applaud ? They cannot be 
expected to admire them because they are 
his ; but for the truth and nature contained 
in them, which must first be inly felt and 
copied with severe delight, from the love of 
truth and nature, before it can ever appear 
there. Was Raphael, think you, when he 
painted his pictures of the Virgin and Child 
in all their inconceivable truth and beauty of 
expression, thinking most of his subject or of 
himself? Do you suppose that Titian, when 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 279 

he painted a landscape, was pluming himself 
on being thought the finest colourist in the 
world, or making himself so by looking at 
nature ? Do you imagine that Shakspeare, 
when he wrote Lear or Othello, was thinking 
of any thing but Lear and Othello ? Or that 
Mr. Kean, when he plays these characters, is 
thinking of the audience? — ISo: he who 
would be great in the eyes of others must 
first learn to be nothing in his own. The 
love of fame, as it enters at times into his 
mind, is only another name for the love of 
excellence ; or it is the ambition to attain the 
highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest 
authority — that of time. 

Those minds, then, which are the most 
entitled to expect it, can best put up with 
the postponement of their claims to lasting 
fame. They can afford to wait. They are 
not afraid that truth and nature will ever wear 
out ; will lose their gloss with novelty, or 
their effect with fashion. If their works have 
the seeds of immortality in them, they will 
live ; if they have not, they care little about 
them as theirs. They do not complain of 
the start which others have got of them in the 
race of everlasting renown, or of the impossi- 
bility of attaining the honours which time 
alone can give, during the term of their 



280 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

natural lives. They know that no applause, 
however loud and violent, can anticipate or 
over-rule the judgment of posterity; that the 
opinion of no one individual, nor of any one 
generation can have the weight, the authority 
(to say nothing of the force of sympathy and 
prejudice), which must belong to that of 
successive generations. The brightest living 
reputation cannot be equally imposing to the 
imagination with that which is covered and 
rendered venerable with the hoar of innumer- 
able ages. No modern production can have 
the same atmosphere of sentiment around it 
as the remains of classical antiquity. But 
then our moderns may console themselves 
with the reflection that they will be old in 
their turn, and will either be remembered with 
still increasing honours, or quite forgotten ! 

I would speak of the living poets as I have 
spoken of the dead (for I think highly of many 
of them) ; but I cannot speak of them with 
the same reverence, because I do not feel it ; 
with the same confidence, because I cannot 
have the same authority to sanction my opi- 
nion. I cannot be absolutely certain that any 
body, twenty years hence, will think any thing 
about any of them ; but we may be pretty 
sure that Milton and Shakspeare will be 
remembered twenty years hence* We are, 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 2S1 

therefore, not without excuse if we husband 

our enthusiasm a little, and do not prema- 
turely lay out our whole stock in untried 
ventures, and what may turn out to be false 
bottoms. I have myself out-lived one gene- 
ration of favourite poets, the Darvvins, the 
Hayleys, the Sewards. Who reads them 
now ? — If, however, I have not the verdict 
of posterity to bear me out in bestowing the 
most unqualified praises on their immediate 
successors, it is also to be remembered that 
neither does it warrant me in condemning 
them. Indeed, it was not my wish to go 
into this ungrateful part of the subject ; but 
something of the sort is expected from me, 
and I must run the gauntlet as well as I 
can. Another circumstance that adds to the 
difficulty of doing justice to all parties is 
that I happen to have had a personal ac- 
quaintance with some of these jealous votaries 
of the Muses ; and that is not the likeliest 
way to imbibe a high opinion of the rest. 
Poets do not praise one another in the lan- 
guage of hyperbole. I am afraid, therefore, 
that I labour under a degree of prejudice 
against some of the most popular poets of the 
day, from an early habit of deference to the 
critical opinions of some of the least popular. 
I cannot say that I ever learnt much about 



282 OX THE LIVING POETS. 

Shakspeare or Milton, Spenser or Chaucer, 
from these professed guides; fori never heard 
them say much about them. They were 
always talking of themselves and one another. 
Nor am I certain that this sort of personal 
intercourse with living authors, while it takes 
away all real relish or freedom of opinion with 
regard to their contemporaries, greatly en- 
hances our respect for themselves. Poets are 
not ideal beings ; but have their prose-sides, 
like the commonest of the people. We often 
hear persons say, What they would have given 
to have seen Shakspeare ! For my part, I 
would give a great deal not to have seen him ; 
at least, if he was at all like any body else 
that I have ever seen, But why should he ? 
for his works are not ! This is, doubtless, one 
great advantage which the dead have over the 
living. It is always fortunate for ourselves 
and others, when we are prevented from 
exchanging admiration for knowledge. The 
splendid vision that in youth haunts our idea 
of the poetical character, fades, upon ac- 
quaintance, into the light of common day ; as 
the azure tints that deck the mountain's brow 
are lost on a nearer approach to them. It is 
well, according to the moral of one of the 
Lyrical Ballads, — " To leave Yarrow un- 
visited." But to " leave this face-making/ 5 
and begin. 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 283 

I am a great admirer of the female writers 
of the present day ; they appear to me like so 
many modern muses. I could be in love with 
Mrs. Inchbald, romantic with Mrs. Radcliffe, 
and sarcastic with Madame D'Arblay : but 
they are novel-writers, and, like Audrey, may 
" thank the gods for not having made them 
poetical." Did any one here ever read Mrs. 
Leicester's School ? If they have not, I wish 
they would; there will be just time before 
the next three volumes of the Tales of My 
Landlord come out. That is not a school of 
affectation, but of humanity. No one can 
think too highly of the work, or highly enough 
of the author. 

The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. 
Barbauld, with whose works I became ac- 
quainted before those of any other author, 
male or female, when I was learning to spell 
words of one syllable in her story-books for 
children. I became acquainted with her 
poetical works long after in Enfield's Speaker ; 
and remember being much divided in my 
opinion, at that time, between her Ode to 
Spring and Collins's Ode to Evening. I wish 
I could repay my childish debt of gratitude 
in terms of appropriate praise. She is a very 
pretty poetess ; and, to my fancy, strews the 
flowers of poetry most agreeably round the 



284 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

borders of religious controversy. She is a neat 
and pointed prose-writer. Her " Thoughts 
on the Inconsistency of Human Expectations" 
is one of the most ingenious and sensible essays 
in the language. There is the same idea in 
one of Barrow's Sermons. 

Mrs. Hannah More is another celebrated 
modern poetess, and I believe still living. She 
has written a great deal which I have never 
read. 

Miss Baillie must make up this trio of fe- 
male poets. Her tragedies and comedies, one 
of each to illustrate each of the passions, 
separately, from the rest, are heresies in the 
dramatic art. She is a Unitarian in poetry. 
With her the passions are, like the French 
republic, one and indivisible : they are not so 
in nature, or in Shakspeare. Mr. Southey 
has, I believe, somewhere expressed an 
opinion that the Basil of Miss Baillie is 
superior to Romeo and Juliet. I shall not 
stay to contradict him. On the other hand, I 
prefer her De Montfort, which was condemn- 
ed on the stage, to some later tragedies, which 
have been more fortunate — to the Remorse, 
Bertram, and lastly, Fazio. There is in the 
chief character of that play a nerve, a con- 
tinued unity of interest, a setness of purpose 
and precision of outline which John Kemble 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 285 

alone was capable of giving ; and there is all 
the grace which women have in writing. In 
saying that De Montfort was a character which 
just suited Mr. Kemble, I mean to pay a 
compliment to both. He was not a a man of 
no mark or likelihood : ?? and what he could 
be supposed to do particularly well must have 
a meaning in it. As to the other tragedies 
just mentioned, there is no reason why any 
common actor should not " make mouths in 
them at the invisible event/* — one as well as 
another. Having thus expressed my sense of 
the merits of this authoress, I must add that 
her comedy of the Election, performed last 
summer at the Lyceum with indifferent suc- 
cess, appears to me the perfection of baby- 
house theatricals. Every thing in it has such 
a do-me-good air, is so insipid and amiable. 
Virtue seems such a pretty playing at make- 
believe, and vice is such a naughty word. It 
is a theory of some French author that little 
girls ought not to be suffered to have dolls to 
play with, to call them pretty dears, to admire 
their black eyes and cherry cheeks, to lament 
and bewail over them if they fall down and 
hurt their faces, to praise them when they are 
good, and scold them when they are naughty. 
It is a school of affectation : Miss Baillie has 
profited of it. She treats her grown men and 



286 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

women as little girls treat their dolls — makes 
moral puppets of them, pulls the wires, and 
they talk virtue and act vice, according to their 
cue and the title prefixed to each comedy or 
tragedy, not from any real passions of their 
own, or love either of virtue or vice. 

The transition from these to Mr. Rogers's 
Pleasures of Memory is not far : he is a very 
lady-like poet. He is an elegant, but feeble 
writer. He wraps up obvious thoughts in a 
glittering cover of fine words ; is full of 
enigmas with no meaning to them ; is studi- 
ously inverted, and scrupulously far-fetched ; 
and his verses are poetry, chiefly because no 
particle, line, or syllable of them reads like 
prose. He differs from Milton in this respect, 
who is accused of having inserted a number 
of prosaic lines in Paradise Lost. This kind of 
poetry, which is a more minute and inoffen- 
sive species of the Delia Cruscan, is like the 
game of asking what one's thoughts are like. 
It is a tortuous, tottering, wriggling, fidgetty 
translation of every thing from the vulgar 
tongue, into all the tantalizing, teasing, 
tripping, lisping mimminee-pimminee of the 
highest brilliancy and fashion of poetical 
diction. You have nothing like truth of 
nature or simplicity of expression. The 
fastidious and languid reader is never shocked 



ON THE LIVING POETS, 287 

by meeting, from the rarest chance in the 
world, with a single homely phrase or intelli- 
gible idea. You cannot see the thought for 
the ambiguity of the language, the figure for 
the finery, the picture for the varnish. The 
whole is refined, and frittered away into an 
appearance of the most evanescent brilliancy 
and tremulous imbecility.— There is no other 
fault to be found with the Pleasures of Me- 
mory than a want of taste and genius. The 
sentiments are amiable, and the notes at the 
end highly interesting, particularly the one 
relating to the Countess Pillar (as it is called) 
between Appleby and Penrith, erected (as the 
inscription tells the thoughtful traveller) by 
Anne Countess of Pembroke, in the year 
1648, in memory of her last parting with her 
good and pious mother in the same place in 
the year l6l6— 

" To shew that power of love, how great 
Beyond all human estimate." 

This story is also told in the poem, but with 
so many artful inuendos and tinsel words that 
it is hardly intelligible, and still less does it 
reach the heart. 

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope is of the 
same school, in which a painful attention is 
paid to the expression in proportion as there 



233 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

is little to express, and the decomposition of 
prose is substituted for the composition of 
poetry. How much the sense and keeping 
in the ideas are sacrificed to a jingle of words 
and epigrammatic turn of expression, may be 
seen in such lines as the following : — one of 
the characters, an old invalid, wishes to end 
his days under 

" Some hamlet shade, to yield his sickly form 
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm." 

Now the antithesis here totally faik : for it is 
the breeze, and not the tree, or, as it is 
quaintly expressed, hamlet shade, that affords 
health, though it is the tree that affords shelter 
in or from the storm. Instances of the same 
sort of curiosa infelicitas are not rare in this 
author. His verses on the Battle of Hohen- 
linden have considerable spirit and animation. 
His Gertrude of Wyoming is his principal 
performance. It is a kind of historical para- 
phrase of Mr. Wordsworth's poem of Ruth. 
It shows little power, or power enervated by 
extreme fastidiousness. It is 

« Of outward show 



Elaborate ; of inward less exact.'* 

There are painters who trust more to the 
setting of their pictures than to the truth of 
the likeness. Mr. Campbell always seems to 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 289 

me to be thinking how his poetry will look 
when it conies to be hot-pressed on superfine 
wove paper, to have a disproportionate eye to 
points and commas, and dread of errors of the 
press. He is so afraid of doing wrong, of 
making the smallest mistake, that he does 
little or nothing. Lest he should wander 
irretrievably from the right path, he stands 
still. He writes according to established 
etiquette. He offers the Muses no violence. 
If he lights upon a good thought, he immedi- 
ately drops it for fear of spoiling a good 
thing. When he launches a sentiment that 
you think will float him triumphantly for once 
to the bottom of the stanza, he stops short at 
the end of the first or second line, and stands 
shivering on the brink of beauty, afraid to 
trust himself to the fathomless abyss. Tutus 
nimium, timidusque procellarum. His very 
circumspection betrays him. The poet, as 
well as the woman, that deliberates, is undone. 
He is much like a man whose heart fails him 
just as he is going up in a balloon, and who 
breaks his neck by flinging himself out of it 
when it is too late. Mr. Campbell too often 
maims and mangles his ideas before they are full 
formed, to form them to the Procrustes' bed 
of criticism ; or strangles his intellectual off- 
spring in the birth, lest they should come to 

u 



290 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

an untimely end in the Edinburgh Review. 
He plays the hypercritic on himself, and 
starves his genius to death from a needless 
apprehension of a plethora. No writer who 
thinks habitually of the critics, either to 
tremble at their censures or set them at 
defiance, can write well. It is the business 
of reviewers to watch poets, not of poets to 
watch reviewers. There is one admirable 
simile in this poem, of the European child 
brought by the sooty Indian in his hand, 
" like morning brought by night. " The love- 
scenes of Gertrude of Wyoming breathe a 
balmy voluptuousness of sentiment ; but they 
are generally broken off in the middle ; they 
are like the scent of a bank of violets, faint 
and rich, which the gale suddenly conveys in 
a different direction. Mr. Campbell is care- 
ful of his own reputation, and economical of 
the pleasures of his readers. He treats them 
as the fox in the fable treated his guest the 
stork ; or, to use his own expression, his fine 
things are 

" Like angels' visits, few, and far between.' 5 * 

* There is the same idea in Blair's Grave. 

" Its visits, 

Like those of angels, short, and far between." 
Mr. Campbell, in altering the expression, has spoiled it. 
" Few," and " far between," are the same thing. 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 291 

There is another fault in this poem, which is 
the mechanical structure of the fable. The 
most striking events occur in the shape of 
antitheses. The story is cut into the form of 
a parallelogram. There is the same systematic 
alternation of good and evil, of violence and 
repose, that there is of light and shade in a 
picture. The Indian, who is the chief agent 
in the interest of the poem 5 vanishes and 
returns after long intervals, like the periodical 
revolutions of the planets. He unexpectedly 
appears just in the nick of time, after years of 
absence, and without any known reason but 
the convenience of the author and the asto- 
nishment of the reader ; as if nature were a 
machine constructed on a principle of com- 
plete contrast, to produce a theatrical effect. 
Nee Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus. 
Mr. Campbell's savage never appears but upon 
great occasions, and then his punctuality is 
preternatural and alarming. He is the most 
wonderful instance on record of poetical reli- 
ability. The most dreadful mischiefs happen 
at the most mortifying moments ; and when 
your expectations are wound up to the highest 
pitch, you are sure to have them knocked on 
the head by a premeditated and remorseless 
stroke of the poets pen. This is done so 
often for the convenience of the author, that 

u 2 



292 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

in the end it ceases to be for the satisfaction of 
the reader. 

Tom Moore is a poet of a quite different 
stamp. He is as heedless, gay, and prodigal 
of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, 
reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of 
both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is an- 
other Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefati- 
gable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is 
for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, 
glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, 
and sparkles in his poetry, while over all love 
waves his purple light. His thoughts are as 
restless, as many, and as bright, as the insects 
that people the sun's beam. " So work the 
honey-bees,'* extracting liquid sweets from 
opening buds; so the butterfly expands its 
wings to the idle air ; so the thistle's silver 
down is wafted over summer seas. An airy 
voyager on life's stream, his mind inhales the 
fragrance of a thousand shores, and drinks 
of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. — 
Wherever his footsteps tend over the ena- 
melled ground of fairy fiction — 

" Around him the bees in play flutter and cluster, 
And gaudy butterflies frolic around." 

The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of 
involuntary power. His facility of production 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 293 

lessens the effect of, and hangs as a dead 
weight upon, what he produces. His levity 
at last oppresses. The infinite delight he 
takes in such an infinite number of things, 
creates indifference in minds less susceptible 
of pleasure than his own. He exhausts at- 
tention by being inexhaustible. His variety 
cloys ; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the 
sight. The graceful ease with which he lends 
himself to every subject, the genial spirit with 
which he indulges in every sentiment, prevents 
him from giving their full force to the masses 
of things, from connecting them into a whole. 
He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. 
His mind does not brood over the great and 
permanent ; it glances over the surfaces, the 
first impressions of things, instead of grappling 
with the deep-rooted prejudices of the mind, 
its inveterate habits, and that u perilous stuff 
that weighs upon the heart.'* His pen, as it 
is rapid and fanciful, wants momentum and 
passion. It requires the same principle to 
make us thoroughly like poetry that makes 
us like ourselves so well the feeling of con- 
tinued identity. The impressions of Mr. 
Moore's poetry are detached, desultory, and 
physical. Its gorgeous colours brighten and 
fade like the rainbow's. Its sweetness evapo- 
rates like the effluvia exhaled from beds of 



294 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

flowers ! His gay laughing style, which re- 
lates to the immediate pleasures of love or 
wine, is better than his sentimental and 
romantic vein. His Irish melodies are not 
free from affectation and a certain sickliness 
of pretension. His serious descriptions are 
apt to run into flowery tenderness. His 
pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sen- 
sibility, or crystallizes into all the prettinesses 
of allegorical language, and glittering hard- 
ness of external imagery. But he has wit at 
will, and of the first quality. His satirical 
and burlesque poetry is his best : it is first- 
rate. His Twopenny Post-Bag is a perfect 
" nest of spicery ;" where the Cayenne is not 
spared. The politician there sharpens the 
poet's pen. In this, too, our bard resembles 
the bee — he has its honey and its sting. 

Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla 
Rookh, even for three thousand guineas. His 
fame is worth more than that. He should 
have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is 
not, however, a failure, so much as an evasion 
and a consequent disappointment of public 
expectation. He should have left it to others 
to break conventions with nations, and faith 
with the w r orld. He should, at any rate, have 
kept his with the public. Lalla Rookh is 
not what people wanted to see whether Mr* 



OX THE LIVING POETS. 295 

Moore could do — namely, whether he could 
write a long epic poem. It is four short tales. 
The interest, however, is often high-wrought 
and tragic, but the execution still turns to the 
effeminate and voluptuous side. Fortitude of 
mind is the first requisite of a tragic or epic 
writer. Happiness of nature and felicity of 
genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of 
the bard of Erin. If he is not perfectly con- 
tented with what he is, all the world beside 
is. He had no temptation to risk any thing 
in adding to the love and admiration of his 
age, and more than one country. 

" Therefore to be possessed with double pomp, 
To guard a title that was rich before, 
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
To throw a perfume on the violet, 
To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
Unto the rainbow, or with taper light 
To seek the beauteous eye of heav : n to garnish, 
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.'' 

The same might be said of Mr. Moore's 
seeking to bind an epic crown, or the shadow 
of one, round his other laurels. 

If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough 
personally, Lord Byron (judging from the 
tone of his writings) might be thought to 
have suffered too much to be a truly great 
poet. If Mr. Moore lays himself too open 
to all the various impulses of things, the out- 



296 OX THE LIVING POETSo 

ward shows oi earth and sky, to every breaih 
that blows, to every stray sentiment that 
crosses his fancy ; Lord Byron shuts himself 
up too much in the impenetrable gloom of 
his own thoughts, and buries the natural light 
of things in u nook monastic. '' The Giaour, 
the Corsair, Childe Harold, are all the same 
person, and they are apparently all himself. 
The everlasting repetition of one subject, the 
same dark ground of fiction, with the darker 
colours of the poet's mind spread over it, the 
unceasing accumulation of horrors on horror's 
head, steels the mind against the sense of pain 
as inevitably as the unwearied Siren sounds 
and luxurious monotony of Mr. Moore's 
poetry make it inaccessible to pleasure. 

Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Mr. 
Moore's is careless and dissipated. He has 
more depth of passion, more force and impe- 
tuosity, but the passion is always of the same 
unaccountable character, at once violent and 
sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is not the pas- 
sion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or 
the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind 
preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or 
indifferent to, all other things. There is 
nothing less poetical than this sort of unac- 
commodating selfishness. There is nothing 
more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorp- 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 297 

tion of all the interests of others, of the good 
and ills of life, in the ruling passion and 
moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it 
would make itself the centre of the universe, 
and there was nothing worth cherishing but 
its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer, 
eating into the heart of poetry. But still 
there is power; and power rivets attention 
and forces admiration. " He hath a demon :" 
and that is the next thing to being full of the 
God. His brow collects the scattered gloom : 
his eye flashes livid fire that withers and con- 
sumes. But still we watch the progress of 
the scathing bolt with interest, and mark the 
ruin it leaves behind with awe. Within the 
contracted range of his imagination, he has 
great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses 
elements and agents congenial to his mind, the 
dark and glittering ocean, the frail bark hurry- 
ing before the storm, pirates and men that 
" house on the wild sea with wild usages/* 
He gives the tumultuous eagerness of action, 
and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour 
of style and force of conception, he in one 
sense surpasses every writer of the present 
day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles 
of misanthropy. He who w ishes for " a curse 
to kill with," may find it in Lord Byron 5 s 
writings. Yet he has beauty lurking under- 



298 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

neath his strength, tenderness sometimes 
joined with the phrenzy of despair, A flash 
of golden light sometimes follows from a 
stroke of his pencil, like a falling meteor. 
The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over 
charnel-houses and the grave ! 

There is one subject on which Lord Byron 
is fond of writing, on which I wish he would 
not write — Bonaparte. Not that I quarrel 
with his writing for him, or against him, but 
but with his writing both for him and against 
him. What right has he to do this? Bona- 
parte's character, be it what else it may, does 
not change every hour according to his Lord- 
ship's varying humour. He is not a pipe for 
Fortune's finger, or for his Lordship's Muse, 
to play what stop she pleases on. Why should 
Lord Byron now laud him to the skies in the 
hour of his success, and then peevishly wreak 
his disappointment on the god of his idolatry? 
The man he writes of does not rise or fall 
with circumstances : but " looks on tempests 
and is never shaken." Besides, he is a subject 
for history, and not for poetry. 

" Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread, 
But as the marigold at the sun's eye, 

And in themselves their pride lies buried ; 
For at a frown they in their glory die. 

The painful warrior, famoused for fight, 
After a thousand victories once foil'd, 



OX THE LIVING POETS. 299 

Is from the book of honour razed quite, 
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd." 

If Lord Byron will write any thing more on 
this hazardous theme, let him take these lines 
of Shakspeare for his guide, and finish them 
in the spirit of the original — they will then 
be worthy of the subject. 

Walter Scott is the most popular of all the 
poets of the present day, and deservedly so. 
He describes that which is most easily and 
generally understood with more vivacity and 
effect than any body else. He has no excel- 
lences, either of a lofty or recondite kind, 
which lie beyond the reach of the most ordi- 
nary capacity to find out ; but he has all the 
good qualities which all the world agree to 
understand. His style is clear, flowing, and 
transparent : his sentiments, of which his style 
is an easy and natural medium, are common 
to him with his readers. He has none of 
Mr. Wordsworth's idiosyncracy . He differs 
from his readers only in a greater range of 
knowledge and facility of expression. His 
poetry belongs to the class of improvisatori 
poetry. It has neither depth, height, nor 
breadth in it ; neither uncommon strength, 
nor uncommon refinement of thought, senti- 
ment, or language. It has no originality. 
But if this author has no research, no moving 



300 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

power in his own breast, he relies with the 
greater safety and success on the force of his 
subject. He selects a story such as is sure to 
please, full of incidents, characters, peculiar 
manners, costume, and scenery ; and he tells 
it in a way that can offend no one. He never 
wearies or disappoints you. He is commu- 
nicative and garrulous ; but he is not his own 
hero. He never obtrudes himself on your 
notice to prevent your seeing the subject. 
What passes in the poem passes much as it 
would have done in reality. The author has 
little or nothing to do with it. Mr. Scott has 
great intuitive power of fancy, great vividness 
of pencil in placing external objects and 
events before the eye. The force of his mind 
is picturesque, rather than moral. He gives 
more of the features of nature than the soul 
of passion. He conveys the distinct outlines 
and visible changes in outward objects, rather 
than " their mortal consequences." He is 
very inferior to Lord Byron in intense pas- 
sion, to Moore in delightful fancy, to Mr. 
Wordsworth in profound sentiment : but he 
has more picturesque power than any of 
them ; that is, he places the objects them- 
selves, about which they might feel and think, 
in a much more striking point of view 7 , with 
greater variety of dress and attitude, and with 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 301 

more local truth of colouring. His imagery 
is Gothic and grotesque. The manners and 
actions have the interest and curiosity belong- 
ing to a wild country and a distant period of 
time. Few descriptions have a more com- 
plete reality, a more striking appearance of 
life and motion, than that of the warriors in 
the Lady of the Lake, who start up at the 
command of Roderick Dhu, from their con- 
cealment under the fern, and disappear agabi 
in an instant. The Lay of the Last Minstrel 
and Marmion are the first, and perhaps the 
best, of his works. The Goblin Page, in 
the first of these, is a very interesting and 
inscrutable little personage. In reading these 
poems, I confess I am a little disconcerted, 
in turning over the page, to find Mr. WestalFs 
pictures, which always seem facsimiles oi 
the persons represented, with ancient costume 
and a theatrical air. This may be a compli- 
ment to Mr. Westall, but it is not one to 
Walter Scott. The truth is, there is a 
modern air in the midst of the antiquarian 
research of Mr. Scott's poetry. It is history 
or tradition in masquerade. Not only the 
crust of old words and images is worn off 
with time, — the substance is grown compara- 
tively light and worthless. The forms are old 
and uncouth ; but the spirit is effeminate and 



302 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

frivolous. This is a deduction from the praise 
I have given to his pencil for extreme fidelity, 
though it has been no obstacle to its drawing- 
room success. He has just hit the town 
between the romantic and the fashionable ; 
and, between the two, secured all classes of 
readers on his side. In a word, I conceive 
that he is to the great poet what an excellent 
mimic is to a great actor. There is no de- 
terminate impression left on the mind by 
reading his poetry. It has no results. The 
reader rises up from the perusal with new 
images and associations, but he remains the 
same man that he was before. A great mind 
is one that moulds the minds of others. Mr. 
Scott has put the Border Minstrelsy and 
scattered traditions of the country into easy, 
animated verse. But the Notes to his poems 
are just as entertaining as the poems them- 
selves, and his poems are only entertaining. 

Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet 
now living. He is the reverse of Walter 
Scott in his defects and excellences. He has 
nearly all that the other wants, and wants all 
that the other possesses. His poetry is not 
external, but internal ; it does not depend 
upon tradition, or story, or old song ; he fur- 
nishes it from his own mind, and is his own 
subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 303 

Of many of the Lyrical Ballads, it is not 
possible to speak in terms of too high praise, 
such as Hart-leap Well, the Banks of the 
Wye, Poor Susan, parts of the Leech- gatherer, 
the lines to a Cuckoo, to a Daisy, the Com- 
plaint, several of the Sonnets, and a hundred 
others of inconceivable beauty, of perfect 
originality and pathos. They open a finer 
and deeper vein of thought and feeling than 
any poet in modern times has done, or at- 
tempted. He has produced a deeper impres- 
sion, and on a smaller circle, than any other 
of his contemporaries. His powers have 
been mistaken by the age, nor does he exactly 
understand them himself. He cannot form a 
whole. He has not the constructive faculty. 
He can give only the fine tones of thought, 
drawn from his mind by accident or nature, 
like the sounds drawn from the iEolian harp 
by the wandering gale. — He is totally deficient 
in all the machinery of poetry. His Excur- 
sion, taken as a whole, notwithstanding the 
noble materials thrown away in it, is a proof 
of this. The line labours, the sentiment 
moves slow, but the poem stands stock-still. 
The reader makes no way from the first line 
to the last. It is more than any thing in the 
world like Robinson Crusoe's boat, which 
would have been an excellent good boat, and 



304 OX THE LIVIXG POETS. 

would have carried him to the other side of 
the globe, but that he could not get it out of 
the sand where it stuck fast. I did what little 
I could to help to launch it at the time, but 
it would not do. I am not, however, one of 
those who laugh at the attempts or failures of 
men of genius. It is not my way to cry 
" Long life to the conqueror. " Success and 
desert are not with me synonymous terms ; 
and the less Mr. Wordsworth's general merits 
have been understood, the more necessary is 
it to insist upon them. This is not the place 
to repeat what I have already said on the sub- 
ject. The reader may turn to it in the Round 
Table. # I do not think, however, there is any 
thing in the larger poem equal to many of the 
detached pieces in the Lyrical Ballads. As 
Mr. Wordsworth's poems have been little 
known to the public, or chiefly through garbled 
extracts from them, I will here give an entire 
poem (one that has always been a favourite 
with me), that the reader may know what it is 
that the admirers of this author find to be 
delighted with in his poetry. Those who 
do not feel the beauty and the force of it 
may save themselves the trouble of inquiring 
farther. 



* The criticism referred to will be found in the Appendix. 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 305 



HART-LEAP WELL. 

" The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor 
With the slow motion of a summer's cloud ; 
He turned aside towards a vassal's door, 
And, ' Bring another horse !' he cried aloud. 

* Another horse !' — That shout the vassal heard, 
And saddled his best steed, a comely gray ; 

Sir Waiter mounted him ; he was the third 
Which he had mounted on that glorious day. 

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes : 
The horse and horseman are a happy pair ; 

But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies, 
There is a doleful silence in the air. 

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's hall, 
That as they galloped made the echoes roar ; 

But horse and man are vanished, one and all ; 
Such race, I think, was never seen before. 

Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind, 

Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain : 

Brach, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind, 
Follow, and up the weary mountain strain. 

The knight hallooed, he chid and cheered them on 
With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern ; 

But breath and eye-sight fail ; and, one by one, 
The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern, 

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race ? 

The bugles that so joyfully were blown ? 
— This chase it looks not like an earthly chase ; 

Sir Walter and the hart are left alone. 

X 



306 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

The poor hart toils along the mountain side ; 

I will not stop to tell how far he fled, 
Nor will I mention by what death he died ; 

But now the knight beholds him lying dead. 

Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn ; 

He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy : 
He neither smacked his whip nor blew his horn, 

But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy. 

Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned, 
Stood his dumb partner in this glorious act ; 

Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned ; 
And foaming like a mountain cataract. 

Upon his side the hart was lying stretched : 
His nose half-touched a spring beneath a hill, 

And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched 
The waters of the spring were trembling still. 

And now, too happy for repose or rest, 
(Was never man in such a joyful case !) 

Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west, 
And gazed, and gazed upon that darling place. 

And climbing up the hill — (it was at least, 
Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found, 

Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast 
Had left imprinted on the verdant ground. 

Sir Walter wiped his face and cried, ' Till now 
Such sight was never seen by living eyes : 

Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow, 
Down to the very fountain where he lies. 

I'll build a plep^ure-house upon this spot, 
And a small arbour, made for rural joy ; 

'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot, 
A place of love for damsels that are coy. 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 30? 

A cunning artist will I have to frame 

A bason for that fountain in the dell ; 
And they, who do make mention of the same 

From this day forth, shall call it Hart-leap Well. 

And, gallant brute ! to make thy praises known, 
Another monument shall here be raised ; 

Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone, 
And planted where thy hoofs the turf have grazed. 

And, in the summer-time when days are long, 

I will come hither with my paramour ; 
And with the dancers, and the minstrel's song, 

We will make merry in that pleasant bower, 

Till the foundations of the mountains fail, 
My mansion with its arbour shall endure ; — ■ 

The joy of them who till the fields of Swale, 
And them who dwell among the woods of Ure ! ' 

Then home he went, and left the hart, stone dead, 
With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring, 

— Soon did the knight perform what he had said, 
And far and wide the fame thereof did ring. 

Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered, 
A cup of stone received the living well ; 

Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared, 
And built a house of pleasure in the dell. 

And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall 
With trailing plants and trees were intertwined, — 

Which soon composed a little sylvan hail, 
A leafy shelter from the sun and wind. 

And thither, when the summer- days were long, 
Sir Walter journeyed with his paramour ; 

And with the dancers and the minstrel's song 
Made merriment within that pleasant bower. 

X 2 



308 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

The knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time, 
And his bones lie in his paternal vale. — 

But there is matter for a second rhyme, 
And I to this would add another tale." 



PART SECOND. 

" The moving accident is not my trade : 

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts : 
'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, 
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts. 

As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair, 
It chanced that I saw standing in a dell 

Three aspens at three corners of a square, 
And one, not four yards distant, near a well. 

What this imported I could ill divine : 

And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop, 

I saw three pillars standing in a line, 
The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top. 

The trees were grey, with neither arms nor head ; 

Half- wasted the square mound of tawny green ; 
So that you just might say, as then I said, 

6 Here in old time the hand of man hath been.' 

I looked upon the hill both far and near, 
More doleful place did never eye survey ; 

It seemed as if the spring-time came not here, 
And Nature here were willing to decay. 

I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost, 
When one, who was in shepherd's garb attired, 

Came up the hollow : — Kim did I accost, 

And what this place might be I then inquired. 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 309 

The shepherd stopped, and that same story told 
Which in my former rhyme I have rehearsed. 

' A jolly place,' said he, ' in times of old ! 
But something ails it now ; the spot is curst. 

You see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood — 
Some say that they are beeches, others elms — 

These were the bower ; and here a mansion stood, 
The finest palace of a hundred realms ! 

The arbour does its own condition tell ; 

You see the stones, the fountain, and the stream ; 
But as to the great lodge ! you might as well 

Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream. 

There's neither dog nor heifer, horse nor sheep, 
Will wet his lips within that cup of stone ; 

And oftentimes, when all are fast asleep, 
This water doth send forth a dolorous groan. 

Some say that here a murder has been done, 
And blood cries out for blood : but, for my part, 

I've guessed, when I've been sitting in the sun, 
That it was all for that unhappy hart. 

What thoughts must through the creature's brain have 
passed ! 

Even from the topmost stone, upon the steep, 
Are but three bounds— and look, Sir, at this last— 

O Master ! it has been a cruel leap. 

For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race ; 

And in my simple mind we cannot tell 
What cause the hart might have to love this place, 

And come and make his death-bed near the well. 

Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank, 
Lulled by this fountain in the summer-tide ; 

This water was perhaps the first he drank 
When he had wandered from his mother's side a 



310 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

In April here beneath the scented thorn 

He heard the birds their morning carols sing ; 

And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born 
Not half a furlong from that self-same spring. 

But now here's neither grass nor pleasant shade : 
The sun on drearier hollow never shone ; 

So will it be, as I have often said, 

Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.' 

6 Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well ; 

Small difference lies between thy creed and mine ; 
This beast not unobserved by Nature fell ; 

His death was mourned by sympathy divine. 

The Being that is in the clouds and air, 

That is in the green leaves among the groves, 

Maintains a deep and reverential care 

For the unoffending creatures whom he loves. 

The pleasure-house is dust : — behind, before, 
This is no common waste, no common gloom ; 

But Nature, in due course of time, once more 
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. 

She leaves these objects to a slow decay, 

That what we are, and have been, may be known ; 

But, at the coming of the milder day, 
These monuments shall all be overgrown. 

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, 

Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals, 

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.' " 

Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that 
which has been denominated the Lake school 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 311 

of poetry ; a school which, with all my re- 
spect for it, I do not think sacred from 
criticism or exempt from faults, of some of 
which faults I shall speak with becoming 
frankness ; for I do not see that the liberty 
of the press ought to be shackled, or freedom 
of speech curtailed, to screen either its revo- 
lutionary or renegado extravagances. This 
school of poetry had its origin in the French 
revolution, or rather in those sentiments and 
opinions which produced that revolution; and 
which sentiments and opinions were indirectly 
imported into this country in translations from 
the German about that period. Our poetical 
literature had, towards the close of the last 
century, degenerated into the most trite, in- 
sipid, and mechanical of all things, in the 
hands of the followers of Pope and the old 
French school of poetry. It wanted some- 
thing to stir it up, and it found that some- 
thing in the principles and events of the 
French revolution. From the impulse it thus 
received, it rose at once from the most servile 
imitation and tamest common -place to the 
utmost pitch of singularity and paradox. The 
change in the belles-lettres w 7 as as complete, 
and to many persons as startling, as the change 
in politics with which it went hand in hand. 
There was a mighty ferment in the heads of 



312 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

statesmen and poets, kings and people, — 
According to the prevailing notions, all was 
to be natural and new. Nothing that was 
established was to be tolerated. All the 
common-place figures of poetry, tropes, alle- 
gories, personifications, with the whole hea- 
then mythology, were instantly discarded ; a 
classical allusion was considered as a piece of 
antiquated foppery; capital letters were no 
more allowed in print than letters - patent 
of nobility were permitted in real life ; kings 
and queens were dethroned from their rank 
and station in legitimate tragedy or epic 
poetry, as they were decapitated elsewhere ; 
rhyme was looked upon as a relic of the 
feudal system, and regular metre was abo- 
lished along with regular government. — 
Authority and fashion, elegance or arrange- 
ment, were hooted out of countenance, as 
pedantry and prejudice. Every one did that 
which was good in his own eyes. The object 
was to reduce all things to an absolute level ; 
and a singularly affected and outrageous sim- 
plicity prevailed in dress and manners, in 
style and sentiment. A striking effect pro- 
duced where it was least expected, something 
new and original, no matter whether good, 
bad, or indifferent, whether mean or lofty, 
extravagant or childish, was all that was aimed 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 313 

at, or considered as compatible with sound 
philosophy and an age of reason. The licen- 
tiousness grew extreme : Coryate's Crudities 
were nothing to it. The world was to be 
turned topsy-turvy ; and poetry, by the good- 
wall of our Adam -wits, was to share its fate 3 
and begin de novo. It was a time of promise, 
a renewal of the world and of letters; and 
the Deucalions, who were to perform this 
feat of regeneration, were the present poet- 
laureat and the two authors of the Lyrical 
Ballads. The Germans, who made heroes 
of robbers, and honest women of cast-off 
mistresses, had already exhausted the extra- 
vagant and marvellous in sentiment and situa- 
tion ; our native writers adopted a wonderful 
simplicity of style and matter. The paradox 
they set out with was that all things are by 
nature equally fit subjects for poetry ; or that, 
if there is any preference to be given, those 
that are the meanest and most unpromising 
are the best, as they leave the greatest scope 
for the unbounded stores of thought and 
fancy in the writer's own mind. Poetry had 
with them " neither buttress nor coigne of 
vantage to make its pendant bed and pro- 
creant cradle." It was not " born so high : 
its aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies 
with the wind, and scorns the sun/' It grew 



314 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

like a mushroom out of the ground ; or was 
hidden in it like a truffle, which it required 
a particular sagacity and industry to find out 
and dig up. They founded the new school 
on a principle of sheer humanity, on pure 
nature void of art. It could not be said of 
these sweeping reformers and dictators in the 
republic of letters, that " in their train walked 
crowns and crownets; that realms and islands, 
like plates, dropt from their pockets :" but 
they were surrounded, in company with the 
Muses, by a mixed rabble of idle apprentices 
and Botany Bay convicts, female vagrants, 
gipsies, meek daughters in the family of 
Christ, of idiot boys and mad mothers, and 
after them " owls and night-ravens flew." — 
They scorned " degrees, priority, and place, 
insisture, course, proportion, season, form, 
office, and custom, in all line of order :" — 
the distinctions of birth, the vicissitudes of 
fortune, did not enter into their abstracted, 
lofty, and levelling calculation of human 
nature. He who was more than man with 
them was none. They claimed kindred only 
with the commonest of the people : peasants, 
pedlars, and village-barbers were their oracles 
and bosom friends. Their poetry, in the 
extreme to which it professedly tended, and 
was in effect carried, levels all distinctions of 



OX THE LIVING POETS. 315 

nature and society ; has u no figures nor no 
fantasies/' which the prejudices of superstition 
or the customs of the world draw in the 
brains of men ; * e no trivial fond records" of 
all that has existed in the history of past ages; 
it has no adventitious pride, pomp, or circum- 
stance, to set it off; " the marshal's truncheon, 
nor the judge's robe;" neither tradition, re- 
verence, nor ceremony, " that to great ones 
'longs:" it breaks in pieces the golden images 
of poetry, and defaces its armorial bearings, 
to melt them down in the mould of common 
humanity or of its own upstart self-sufficiency. 
They took the same method in their new- 
fangled " metre ballad-mongering " scheme, 
which Rousseau did in his prose paradoxes — 
of exciting attention by reversing the esta- 
blished standards of opinion and estimation in 
the world. They were for bringing poetry 
back to its primitive simplicity and state of 
nature, as he was for bringing society back to 
the savage state : so that the only thing re- 
markable left in the world by this change 
would be the persons w r ho had produced it. 
A thorough adept in this school of poetry 
and philanthropy is jealous of all excellence 
but his own. He does not even like to share 
his reputation with his subject ; for he would 
have it all to proceed from his own power and 



316 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

originality of mind. Such a one is slow to 
admire any thing that is admirable ; feels no 
interest in what is most interesting to others, 
no grandeur in any thing grand, no beauty in 
any thing beautiful. He tolerates only what 
he himself creates ; he sympathizes only with 
what can enter into no competition with him, 
with " the bare trees and mountains bare, and 
grass in the green field." He sees nothing* 
but himself and the universe. He hates all 
greatness and all pretensions to it, whether 
well or ill founded. His egotism is in some 
respects a madness ; for he scorns even the 
admiration of himself, thinking it a presump- 
tion in any one to suppose that he has taste 
or sense enough to understand him. He hates 
all science and all art ; he hates chemistry, he 
hates conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates 
Sir Isaac Newton ; he hates wisdom ; he 
hates wit ; he hates metaphysics, which, he 
says, are unintelligible, and yet he would be 
thought to understand them ; he hates prose; 
he hates all poetry but his own ; he hates the 
dialogues in Shakspeare ; he hates music, 
dancing, and painting ; he hates Rubens, he 
hates Rembrandt ; he hates Raphael, he 
hates Titian ; he hates Vandyke ; he hates 
the antique ; he hates the Apollo Belvidere • 
he hates the Venus of Medicis. This is the 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 317 

reason that so few people take an interest in 
his writings, because he takes an interest in 
nothing that others do ! — The effect has been 
perceived as something odd ; but the cause or 
principle has never been distinctly traced to 
its source before, as far as I know. The 
proofs are to be found every where — in Mr. 
Southey's Botany Bay Eclogues, in his book 
of Songs and Sonnets, his Odes and Inscrip- 
tions, so well parodied in the Anti-Jacobin 
Review, in his Joan of Arc, and last, though 
not least, in his Wat Tyler : 

" When Adam delved, and Eve span, 
Where was then the gentleman ?"-— 

(or the poet laureate either, we may ask ?) — - 
in Mr. Coleridge's Ode to an Ass*s Foal, in 
his lines to Sarah, his Religious Musings ; 
and in his and Mr. Words worths Lyrical 
Ballads, passim. 

Of Mr. Southey's larger epics, I have but 
a faint recollection at this distance of time, 
but all that I remember of them is mechanical 
and extravagant, heavy and superficial. His 
affected, disjointed style is well imitated in 
the Rejected Addresses. The difference be- 
tween him and Sir Richard Blackmore seems 
to be that the one is heavy and the other 
light, the one solemn and the other prag- 



318 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

matical, the one phlegmatic and the other 
rlippant ; and that there is no Gay in the 
present time to give a Catalogue Raisonne of 
the performances of the living undertaker of 
epics, Kehama is a loose sprawling figure, 
such as we see cut out of wood or paper, and 
pulled or jerked with wire or thread, to make 
sudden and surprising motions, without mean- 
ing, grace, or nature in them. By far the 
best of his works are some of his shorter 
personal compositions, in which there is an 
ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, 
such as his lines on a picture of Gaspar 
Poussin, the fine tale of Gualberto, his De- 
scription of a Pig, and the Holly-tree, which 
is an affecting, beautiful, and modest retro- 
spect on his own character. May the aspira- 
tion with which it concludes be fulfilled ! # — 



" O reader ! hast thou ever stood to see 

The Holly Tree ? 
The eye that contemplates it well perceives 

Its glossy leaves, 
Ordered by an intelligence so wise 
As might confound the Atheist's sophistries. 

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen 

"Wrinkled and keen ; 
No grazing cattle through their prickly round 

Can reach to wound ; 
But as they grow where nothing is to fear, 
Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear. 



OiV THE LIVING POETS. 319 

But the little he has done of true and sterling 
excellence is overloaded by the quantity of 
indifferent matter which he turns out every 

I love to view these things with curious eyes, 

And moralize ; 
And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree 

Can emblems see 
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, 
Such as may profit in the after time. 

So, though abroad perchance I might appear 

Harsh and austere, 
To those who on my leisure would intrude 

Reserved and rude, 
Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be, 
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. 

And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know, 

Some harshness show, 
All vain asperities I day by day 

Would wear away, 
Till the smooth temper of my age should be 
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. 

And as when all the summer trees are seen 

So bright and green, 
The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display 

Less bright than they, 
But when the bare and wintry woods we see, 
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree ? 

So serious should my youth appear among 

The thoughtless throng, 
So would I seem amid the young and gay 

More grave than they, 
That in my age as cheerful I might be 
As the green winter of the Holly Tree." — 



3*20 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

year, " prosing or versing/ 5 with equally me- 
chanical and irresistible facility. His Essays, 
or political and moral disquisitions, are not so 
full of original matter as Montaigne's. They 
are second or third rate compositions in that 
class. 

It remains that I should say a few words of 
Mr. Coleridge ; and there is no one who has 
a better right to say what he thinks of him 
than I have. " Is there here any dear friend 
of Caesar ? To him I say, that Brutus's love 
to Caesar was no less than his." But no mat- 
ter. — His Ancient Mariner is his most re- 
markable performance, and the only one that 
I could point out to any one as giving an 
adequate idea of his great natural powers. It 
is high German, however, and in it he seems 
to " conceive of poetry but as a drunken 
dream, reckless, careless, and heedless, of 
past, present, and to come." His tragedies 
(for he has written two) are not answerable to 
it ; they are, except a few poetical passages, 
drawling sentiment and metaphysical jargon. 
He has no genuine dramatic talent. There is 
one fine passage in his Christabel, that which 
contains the description of the quarrel between 
Sir Leoline and Sir Roland de Vaux of 
Tryermaine, who had been friends in youth. 



OX THE LIVING POETS. 321 

" Alas ! they had been friends in youth, 
But whispering tongues can poison truth ; 
And constancy lives in realms above ! 
And life is thorny ! and youth is vain ; 
And to be wroth with one we love, 
Doth work like madness in the brain : 
And thus it chanc'd as I divine, 
With Roland and Sir Leoline. 

Each spake words of high disdain 
And insult to his heart's best brother, 
And parted ne'er to meet again ! 
But neither ever found another 
To free the hollow heart from paining — ■ 

They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder : 
A dreary sea now flows between, 
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, 
Shall wholly do away I ween 
The marks of that which once hath been. 

Sir Leoline a moment's space 
Stood gazing on the damsel's face ; 
And the youthful lord of Tryermaine 
Came back upon his heart again." 

It might seem insidious if I were to praise 
his ode entitled Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, 
as an effusion of high poetical enthusiasm^ 
and strong political feeling. His Sonnet to 
Schiller conveys a fine compliment to the 
author of the Robbers, and an equally fine 
idea of the state of youthful enthusiasm in 
which he composed it. 

Y 



J~Z~Z ON THE LIVING POETS. 

1 ' Schiller ! that hour I would have wishM to die, 
If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent 
From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, 
That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry — 

That in no after moment aught less vast 

Might stamp me mortal ! A triumphant shout 
Black Horror scream' d, and all her goblin rout 

From the more with'ring scene diminish'd pass'd. 

Ah ! Bard tremendous in sublimity ! 

Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood, 
Wandering at eve, with finely frenzied eye, 

Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood ! 

Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood, 
Then weep aloud in a wild ecstacy ! " — 

His Condones ad Populum, Watchman, 
&c. are dreary trash. Of his Friend, I have 
spoken the truth elsewhere. But I may say 
of him here, that he is the only person I ever 
knew who answered to the idea of a man of 
genius. He is the only person from whom I 
ever learnt any thing. There is only one thing 
he could learn from me in return, but that he 
has not. He was the first poet I ever knew. 
His genius at that time had angelic wings, 
and fed on manna. He talked on for ever : 
and you wished him to talk on for ever. His 
thoughts did not seem to come with labour 
and effort ; but as if borne on the gusts of 
genius, and as if the wings of his imagination 
lifted him from off his feet. His voice rolled 



ON THE LIVING POETS. 323 

on the ear like the pealing organ, and its 
sound alone was the music of thought. His 
mind was clothed with wings ; and raised on 
them, he lifted philosophy to heaven. In his 
descriptions, you then saw the progress of 
numan happiness and liberty in bright and 
never-ending succession, like the steps of 
Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes ascending 
and descending, and with the voice of God 
at the top of the ladder. And shall I, who 
heard him then, listen to him now? Not 
I ! That spell is broke ; that time is gone 
for ever ; that voice is heard no more : but 
still the recollection comes rushing by with 
thoughts of long-past years, and rings in my 
ears with never-dying sound. 

" What though the radiance which was once so bright.. 
Be now for ever vanish' d from my sight, 
Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r ; 

I do not grieve, but rather find 

Strength in what remains behind ; 

In the primal sympathy, 

Which having been, must ever be ; 

In the soothing thoughts that spring 

Out of human suffering ; 
In years that bring the philosophic mind !' ; — 

I have thus gone through the task I inten- 
ded, and have come at last to the level ground, 
I have felt my subject gradually sinking from 



324 ON THE LIVING POETS. 

under me as I advanced, and have been afraid 
of ending in nothing. The interest has una- 
voidably decreased at almost every successive 
step of the progress, like a play that has its 
catastrophe in the first or second act. This, 
however, I could not help. I have done as 
well as I could. 



THE END. 



APPENDIX. 



i. 

ON MILTON'S LYCIDAS. 

M At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue : 
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." 

Of all Milton's smaller poems, Lycidas is the 
greatest favourite with me. I cannot agree to 
the charge which Dr. Johnson has brought against 
it of pedantry and want of feeling. It is the fine 
emanation of classical sentiment in a youthful 
scholar — "most musical, most melancholy." A 
certain tender gloom overspreads it, a wayward 
abstraction, a forgetfulness of his subject in the 
serious reflections that arise out of it. The gusts 
of passion come and go like the sounds of music 
borne on the wind. The loss of the friend whose 
death he laments seems to have recalled, with 
double force, the reality of those speculations 
which they had indulged together ; we are trans- 
ported to classic ground, and a mysterious strain 
steals responsive on the ear, while we listen to 
the poet, 

66 With eager thought warbling his Doric lay." 



326 ox milton's lycidas. 

I shall proceed to give a few passages at length 
in support of my opinion. The first I shall 
quote is as remarkable for the truth and sweetness 
of the natural descriptions as for the character- 
istic elegance of the allusions. 

" Together both, ere the high lawn appear'd 

Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, 

We drove a-field ; and both together heard 

What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, 

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, 

Oft still the star that rose at evening bright 

Towards Heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheels 

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, 

Temper' d to the oaten flute : 

Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel 

From the glad sound would not be absent long, 

And old Dametas loved to hear our song. 

But oh ! the heavy change, now thou art gone, 

Now thou art gone, and never must return ! 

Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves 

With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 

And all their echoes mourn. 

The willows and the hazel copses green 

Shall now no more be seen 

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 

As killing as the canker to the rose, 

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, 

Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear, 

When first the white-thorn blows ; 

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear!" 

After the fine apostrophe on Fame which Phoe- 
bus is invoked to utter, the poet proceeds : — 

" Oh fountain Arethuse, and thou honour' d flood. 
Smooth sliding Mincius, crown' d with vocal reeds, 



ON MILTON'S LYCIDAS. 327 

That strain I heard was of a higher mood ; 

But now my oat proceeds, 

And listens to the herald of the sea 

That came in Neptune's plea. 

He ask'd the waves, and askM the felon winds, 

What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain? 

And questioned every gust of rugged winds 

That blows from off each beaked promontory. 

They knew not of his story : 

And sage Hippotades their answer brings, 

That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd, 

The air was calm, and on the level brine 

Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd." 



If this is art,, it is perfect art 5 nor do we wish 
for anything better. The measure of the verse, 
the very sound of the names, would almost pro- 
duce the effect here described. To ask the poet 
not to make use of such allusions as these is to 
ask the painter not to dip in the colours of the 
rainbow, if he could. — In fact, it is the common 
cant of criticism to consider every allusion to the 
classics, and particularly in a mind like Milton's, 
as pedantry and affectation. Habit is a second 
nature ; and, in this sense, the pedantry (if it is 
to be so called) of the scholastic enthusiast, who 
is constantly referring to images of which his 
mind is full, is as graceful as it is natural. It is 
not affectation in him to recur to ideas and modes 
of expression with which he has the strongest 
associations, and in which he takes the greatest 
delight. Milton was as conversant with the world 



328 ox milton's lycidas. 

of genius before him as with the world of nature 
about him ; the fables of the ancient mythology 
were as familiar to him as his dreams. To be a 
pedant is to see neither the beauties of nature 
nor of art. Milton saw both 5 and he made use of 
the one only to adorn and give new interest to 
the other. He was a passionate admirer of na- 
ture j and, in a single couplet of his, describing 
the moon, — 

" Like one that had been led astray 
Through the heaven's wide pathless way," — 

there is more intense observation, and intense 
feeling of nature (as if he had gazed himself blind 
in looking at her), than in twenty volumes of de- 
scriptive poetry. But he added in his own obser- 
vation of nature the splendid fictions of ancient 
genius, enshrined her in the mysteries of ancient 
religion, and celebrated her with the pomp of 
ancient names. 

" Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, 
His mantle airy, and his bonnet sedge, 
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. 
Oh ! who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge ? 
Last came and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake." — 

There is a wonderful correspondence in the 
rhythm of these lines to the ideas which they 
convey. This passage, which alludes to the cle- 
rical character of Lycidas, has been found fault 



on milton's lycidas. 3^9 

with, as combining the truths of the Christian re- 
ligion with the fiction of the Heathen mythology. 
I conceive there is very little foundation for 
this objection, either in reason or good taste. 
I will not go so far as to defend Camoens, who,, 
in his Lusiad, makes Jupiter send Mercury with 
a dream to propagate the Catholic religion -, nor 
do I know that it is generally proper to intro 
duce the two things in the same poem, though I 
see no objection to it here j but of this I am 
quite sure, that there is no inconsistency or natu- 
ral repugnance between this poetical and religious 
faith in the same mind. To the understanding, 
the belief of the one is incompatible with that of 
the other ; but, in the imagination, they not only 
may, but do constantly, co-exist. I will venture 
to go farther, and maintain that every classical 
scholar, however orthodox a Christian he may be, 
is an honest Heathen at heart. This requires ex- 
planation. — Whoever, then, attaches a reality to 
any idea beyond the mere name, has, to a certain 
extent (though not an abstract), an habitual and 
practical belief in it. Now, to any one familiar 
with the names of the personages of the Heathen 
mythology, they convey a positive identity beyond 
the mere name. We refer them to something out 
of ourselves. It is only by an effort of abstraction 
that we divest ourselves of the idea of their reality; 
all our involuntary prejudices are on their side. 
This is enough for the poet. They impose on the 
imagination by all the attractions of beauty and 



33C on milton's lycidas. 

grandeur. They come down to us in sculpture 
and in song. We have the same associations with 
them as if they had really been : for the belief of 
the fiction in ancient times has produced all the 
same effects as the reality could have done. It 
was a reality to the minds of the ancient Greeks 
and Romans, and through them it is reflected to 
us. And, as we shape towers, and men, and armed 
steeds, out of the broken clouds that glitter in 
the distant horizon, so, throned above the ruins of 
the ancient world, Jupiter still nods sublime on 
the top of blue Olympus, Hercules leans upon 
his club, Apollo has not laid aside his bow, nor 
Neptune his trident ; the sea-gods ride upon the 
the sounding waves, the long procession of he- 
roes and demi - gods passes in endless review 
before us, and still we hear 

'* The muses in a ring 
Aye round about Jove's altar sing : 

Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 
And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

If all these mighty fictions had really existed, 
they could have done no more for us ! — I shall 
only give one other passage from Lycidas ; but 
I flatter myself that it will be a treat to my 
readers, if they are not already familiar with it. 
It is the passage which contains that exquisite 
description of the flowers : 

" Return, Alpheus ; the dread voice is past 
That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 



ox milton's lycidas. 331 

Their belis and flow'rets of a thousand hues. 
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks, 
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks, 
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, 
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers ; 
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, 
The glowing violet, 

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 
With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, 
And every flower, that sad embroidery wears ; 
Bid amaranthus ail his beauty shed. 
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 
To strew the laureat herse where Lycid lies. 
For so to interpose a little cause, 
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. 
Ah me ! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
Waft far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd, 
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide 
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
Or whether thou to our moist vows denied, 
Sleep'st by the fables of Bellerus old, 
Where the great vision of the guarded mount 
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold 
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth, 
And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.'' 

Dr. Johnson is very much offended at the in- 
troduction of these Dolphins j and indeed; if he 
had had to guide them through the waves, he 
would have made much the same figure as his 
old friend Dr. Burney does, swimming in the 



332 on milton's lycidas. 

Thames with his wig on, with the water-nymphs, 
in the picture of Barry, at the Adelphi. 

There is a description of flowers in the Win- 
ter's Tale, which I shall give as a parallel to 
Milton's. I shall leave my readers to decide 
which is the finest 3 for I dare not give the 
preference. Perdita says, — 



rt Here's flowera for you, 
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, ir™k)ram, 
The marygold that goes to bed with the sun, 
And with him rises, weeping ; these are flowers 
Of middle summer, and I think they are given 
To men of middle age. Y' are welcome. 

" Camillo. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, 
And only live by gazing. 

" Perdita, Out, alas ! 
You'd be so lean that blasts of January 
Would blow you through and through. Now, my fairest 

friends, 
I would I had some flowers o' th' spring, that might 
Become your time of day : O Proserpina, 
For the flowers now that, frighted, you let fall 
From Dis's waggon ! daffodils, 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses, 
That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
Bright Phcebus in his strength, a malady 
Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips, and 
The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds, 
The flower de lis being one. O these I lack 
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend 
To strew him o'er and o'er." 



ON MILTON S EVE. 



333 



Dr. Johnson's general remark, that Milton's 
genius had not room to shew itself in his smaller 
pieces, is not well-founded. Not to mention 
Lycidas, the Allegro, and Penseroso, it proceeds on 
a false estimate of the merits of his great work, 
which is not more distinguished by strength and 
sublimity than by tenderness and beauty. — The 
last were as essential qualities of Milton's mind 
as the first. The battle of the angels, which 
has been commop considered as the best part 
of the Paradise Lost, is the worst. 



II. 



ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON'S EVE. 

The difference between the character of Eve m 
Milton, andShakspeare's female characters is very 
striking, and it appears to me to be this :— Milton 
describes Eve not only as full of love and ten- 
derness for Adam, but as the constant object of 
admiration in herself. She is the idol of the poet's 
imagination, and he paints her whole person with 
a studied profusion of charms. She is the wife, but 
she is still as much as ever the mistress, oiAdam. 
She is represented, indeed, as devoted to her hus- 
band, as twining round him for support, " as 
the vine curls her tendrils/' but her own grace 



O.J4 ON MILTON S EVE. 

and beauty are never lost sight of in the picture 
of conjugal felicity. Adams attention and regard 
are as much turned to her as hers to him ; for 
" in the first garden of their innocence/' he had 
no other objects or pursuits to distract his atten- 
tion ; she was both his business and his pleasure. 
Shakspeare's females,, on the contrary, seem to 
exist only in their attachment to others. They are 
pure abstractions of the affections. Their fea- 
tures are not painted, nor the colour of their hair. 
Their hearts only are laid open. We are ac- 
quainted with Imogen, Miranda, Ophelia, or Des- 
demona, by what they thought and felt, but we 
cannot tell whether they were black, brown, or 
fair. But Milton's Eve is all of ivory and gold. 
Shakspeare seldom tantalizes the reader with a 
luxurious display of the personal charms of his 
heroines, with a curious inventory of particular 
beauties, except indirectly, and for some other 
purpose, as where Iachimo describes Imogen 
asleep, or the old men in the Winter s Tale vie 
with each other in invidious praise of Perdita. 
Even in Juliet, the most voluptuous and glowing 
of the class of characters here spoken of, we are 
reminded chiefly of circumstances connected with 
the physiognomy of passion, as in her leaning 
with her cheek upon her arm, or which only con- 
vey the general impression of enthusiasm made 
on her lover's brain. One thing may be said, that 
Shakspeare had not the same opportunities as 
Milton: for his women were clothed, and it can 



on milton's eve. 335 

not be denied that Milton took Eve at a consi- 
derable disadvantage in this respect. He has 
accordingly described her in all the loveliness of 
nature, tempting to sight as the fruit of the Hes- 
perides guarded by that Dragon old, herself the 
fairest among the flowers of Paradise ! 

The figures of both Adam and Eve are very 
prominent in this poem. As there is little action 
in it, the interest is constantly kept up by the 
beauty and grandeur of the images, They are 
thus introduced : 

" Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, 
Godlike erect, with native honour clad, 
In naked majesty seemed lords of all, 
And worthy seemed ; for in their looks divine 
The image of their glorious Maker shone : 

Though both 
Not equal, as their sex not equal seem'd ; 
For contemplation he and valour form'd, 
For softness she and sweet attractive grace ; 
He for God only, she for God in him. 
His fair large front and eye sublime declar'd 
Absolute rule ; and hyacinthine locks 
Round from his parted forelock manly hung 
Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad ; 
She as a veil down to the slender waist 
Her unadorned golden tresses wore 
Dishevel? d, but in wanton ringlets wav'd 
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied 
Subjection, but required with gentle sway, 
And by her yielded, by him best reeeiv'd, 
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, 
And sweet reluctant amorous delay." 



336 



ON MILTON S EVE. 



Eve is not only represented as beautiful, but 
with conscious beauty. Shakspeare's heroines are 
almost insensible of their charms, and wound 
without knowing it. They are not coquets. If the 
salvation of mankind had depended upon one of 
them, we don't know — but the devil might have 
been baulked. This is but a conjecture ! Eve 
has a great idea of herself, and there is some dif- 
ficulty in prevailing on her to quit her own image, 
the first time she discovers its reflection in the 
water. She gives the following account of her- 
self to Adam : — 

" That day I oft remember, when from sleep 
I first awak'd, and found myself repos'd 
Under a shade of flow'rs, much wond'ring where 
And what I was, whence thither brought and how. 
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound 
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread 
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmov'd 
Pure as the expanse of Heav'n ; I thither went 
With unexperienc'd thought, and laid me down 
On the green bank, to look into the clear 
Smooth lake, that to me seem'd another sky : 
As I bent down to look just opposite 
A shape within the wat'ry gleam appear'd, 
Bending to look on me ; I started back, 
It started back ; but pleas'd I soon returned, 
Pleas'd it return'd as soon with answ'ring looks 
Of sympathy and love. 3 ' 

The poet afterwards adds : — 

" So spake our general mother, and with eyes 
Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd, 
And meek surrender, half embracing lean'd 



ON MILTON S EVE. 337 

On our first father ; half her swelling breast 

Naked met his under the flowing gold 

Of her loose tresses hid : he in delight 

Both of her beauty and submissive charms 

Smil'd with superior love, as Jupiter 

On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds 

That shed the May flowers. 1 ' 

The same thought is repeated with greater 
simplicity, and perhaps even beauty, in the be- 
ginning of the Fifth Book :— 

" So much the more 
His wonder was to find unwaken'd Eve 
With tresses discompos'd and glowing cheek, 
As through unquiet rest : he, on his side, 
Leaning half-rais'd, with looks of cordial love 
Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld 
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, 
Shot forth peculiar graces ; then with voice 
Mild, as when Zephyru3 on Flora breathes, 
Her hand soft touching, whisper'd thus : Awake 
My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found, 
Heav'n's last best gift, my ever new delight, 
Awake.'* 

The general style, indeed, in which Eve is ad- 
dressed by Adam, or described by the poet, is in 
the highest strain of compliment: — ■ 

" When Adam thus to Eve. Fair consort, the hour 

Of night approaches." 
" To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorned," 
" To whom our general ancestor replied, 

Daughter of God and Man, accomplish'd Eve.'" 

Eve is herself so well convinced that these 
epithets are her due that the idea follows her in 

z 



238 on milton's eve 

her sleep, and she dreams of herself as the para- 
gon of nature, the wonder of the universe : — 

" Methought 
Close at mine ear, one call'd me forth to walk, 
With gentle voice, I thought it thine ; it said, 
Why sleep'st thou, Eve ? now is the pleasant time, 
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields 
To the night- warbling bird, that now awake 
Tunes sweetest his love-labour' d song ; now reigns 
Full-orb'd the moon, and with more pleasing light 
Shadowy sets off the face of things ; in vain 
If none regard ; Heav'n wakes with all his eyes, 
Whom to behold but thee, Nature's desire ? 
In whose sight ail things joy, with ravishment 
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze." 

This is the very topic, too, on which the Ser- 
pent afterwards enlarges with so much artful 
insinuation and fatal consequences of success. 
" So talked the spirited sly snake." — The conclu- 
sion of the foregoing scene, in which Eve relates 
her dream and Adam comforts her, is such an 
exquisite piece of description that, though not 
to my immediate purpose, I cannot refrain from 
quoting it :— 

" So cheer'd he his fair spouse, and she was cheer'd ; 
But silently a gentle tear let fal 1 
From either eye, and wip'd them with her hair ; 
Two other precious drops that ready stood, 
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell 
Kiss'd, as the gracious signs of sweet remorse 
And pious awe, that fear'd to have offended. " 

The formal eulogy on Eve which Adam ad- 
dresses to the Angel, in giving an account of 



ON MILTOX S EYE. 



339 



his own creation and hers, is full of elaborate 
grace : — 

" Under his forming hand a creature grew, 

so lovely fair 

That what seem'd fair in all the world seem'd now 
Mean, or in her summ'd up, in her contain'd 
And in her looks, which from that time infus'd 
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before, 
And into ail things from her air inspir'd 
The spirit of love and amorous delight," 

That which distinguishes Milton from the 
other poets, who have pampered the eye and fed 
the imagination with exuberant descriptions of 
female beauty, is the moral severity with which 
he has tempered them. There is not a line in 
his works which tends to licentiousness, or the 
impression of which, if it has such a tendency, 
is not effectually checked by thought and sen- 
timent. The following are two remarkable 
instances :— 

" In shadier bower 
More secret and sequester'd, though but feign'd, 
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph, 
Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess, 
With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs, 
Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed, 
And heavenly quires the hymenoean sung, 
"What day the genial Angel to our sire 
Brought her in naked beauty more adorn'd, 
More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods 
Endow'd with all their gifts, and too like 
In sad event, when to th' unwiser son 

z 2 



340 ox milton's eve. 

Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd 
Mankind by her fair looks, to be aveng'd 
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire." 

The other is a passage of extreme beauty 
and pathos blended. It is the one in which the 
Angel is described as the guest of our first 
ancestors : — 

" Meanwhile at table Eve 
Minister'd naked, and their flowing cups 
With pleasant liquors crown'd : O innocence 
Deserving Paradise ! if ever, then, 
Then had the sons of God excuse to have been 
Enamour'd at that sight : but in those hearts 
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy 
Was understood, the injur'd lover's Hell." 

The character which a living poet has given 
of Spenser would be much more true of 

Milton : — 

fi Yet not more sweet 
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise ; 
High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries." 

Spenser, on the contrary, is very apt to pry 
into mysteries which do not belong to the Muses. 
Milton's voluptuousness is not lascivious nor 
sensual. He describes beautiful objects for their 
own sakes. Spenser has an eye to the conse- 
quences, and steeps every thing in pleasure, often 
not of the purest kind. The want of passion has 
been brought as an objection against Milton, and 
his Adam and Eve have been considered as rather 
insipid personages, wrapped up in one another, 



ox milton's eve. 341 

iind who excite but little sympathy in any one 
else. I do not feel this objection myself : 
I am content to be spectator in such scenes, 
without any other excitement. In general the 
interest in Milton is essentially epic, and not dra- 
matic ; and the difference between the epic and 
the dramatic is this, that in the former the ima- 
gination produces the passion, and in the latter 
the passion produces the imagination. The 
interest of epic poetry arises from the contem- 
plation of certain objects in themselves grand 
and beautiful j the interest of dramatic poetry 
from sympathy with the passions and pursuits of 
others ; that is, from the practical relations of 
certain persons to certain objects, as depending 
on accident or will. 

The Pyramids of Egypt are epic objects : the 
imagination of them is necessarily attended with 
passion 3 but they have no dramatic interest 3 
till circumstances connect them with some hu- 
man catastrophe. Now a poem might be con- 
structed almost entirely of such images, of the 
highest intellectual passion, with little dramatic 
interest - } and it is in this way that Milton has in 
a great measure constructed his poem. That is 
not its fault, but its excellence. The fault is 
in those who have no idea but of one kind of 
interest. But this question would lead to a longer 
discussion than I have room for at present. I 
shall conclude these extracts from Milton with 
two passages, which have always appeared to 



342 on milton's eve. 

me to be highly affecting, and to contain a fine 
discrimination of character : — 

" O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death ! 
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise ? thus leave 
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades, 
Fit haunt of Gods ? Where I had hope to spend. 
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day 
That must be mortal to us both. O flowers, 
That never will in other climate gTow, 
My early visitation and my last 
At even, which I bred up with tender hand 
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names, 
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank 
Your tribes, and water from th' ambrosial fount ? 
Thee, lastly, nuptial bow'r, by me adorn'd 
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee 
How shall I part, and whither wander down 
Into a lower world, to this obscure 
And wild ? how shall we breathe in other air 
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits ?" 

This is the lamentation of Eve on being 
driven out of Paradise. Adam's reflections are 
in a different strain, and still finer. After ex- 
pressing his submission to the will of his 
Maker, he says — 

«* This most afflicts me, that departing hence 
As from his face I shall be hid, depriv'd 
His blessed countenance ; here I could frequent 
With worship place by place where he vouchsafe 
Presence divine, and to my sons relate, 
On this mount he appeared, under this tree 
Stood visible, among these pines his voice 
I heard, here with him at this fountain talk'd : 



on t mr. Wordsworth's "excursion." 343 

So many grateful altars I would rear 

Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone 

Of lustre from the brook, in memory 

Or monument to ages, and thereon 

Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flowers • 

In yonder nether world where shall I seek 

His bright appearances, or footstep trace? 

For though I fled him angry, yet, recall' d 

To life prolonged and promised race, I now 

Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts 

Of glory, and far off his steps adore." 



III. 

ON MR. WORDSWORTH'S POEM, 
"THE EXCURSION." 

In power of intellect, in lofty conception, in 
the depth of feeling, at once simple and su- 
blime, which pervades every part of it, and 
which gives to every object an almost preter- 
natural and preterhuman interest, this work has 
seldom been surpassed. The poem of the Ex- 
cursion resembles that part of the country in 
which the scene is laid. It has the same vast- 
ness and magnificence, with the same nakedness 
and confusion. It has the same overwhelming, 
oppressive power. It excites or recals the same 
sensations which those who have traversed that 
wonderful scenery must have felt. We are 
surrounded with the constant sense and super- 



344 on mr. Wordsworth's " excursion." 

stitious awe of the collective power of matter, 
of the gigantic and eternal forms of nature, on 
which, from the beginning of time, the hand of 
man has made no impression. Here are no 
dotted lines, no hedge- row beauties, no box- 
tree borders, no gravel walks, no square me- 
chanic in closures 5 all is left loose and irregular 
in the rude chaos of aboriginal nature. The 
boundaries of hill and valley are the poet's only 
geography, where we wander with him inces- 
santly over deep beds of moss and waving fern, 
amidst the troops of red-deer and wild animals. 
Such is the severe simplicity of Mr. Words- 
worth's taste that I doubt whether he would 
not reject a druidical temple, or time-hallowed 
ruin, as too modern and artificial for his pur- 
pose. He only familiarizes himself or his 
readers with a stone, covered with lichens, 
which has slept in the same spot of ground 
from the creation of the world, or with the 
rocky fissure between two mountains caused by 
thunder, or with a cavern scooped out by the 
sea. His mind is, as it were, coeval with the 
primary forms of things 5 his imagination holds 
immediately from nature, and " owes no allegi- 
ance" but " to the elements." 

The Excursion may be considered as a philo- 
sophical pastoral poem, — as a scholastic ro- 
mance. It is less a poem on the country than 
on the love of the country. It is not so much 
a description of natural objects as of the feel- 



EXCURSION." 345 

ings associated with them ; not an account of 
the manners of rural life, but the result of the 
poet's reflections on it. He does not present 
the reader with a lively succession of images or 
incidents, but paints the outgoings of his own 
heart, the shapings of his own fancy. He may 
be said to create his own materials ; his 
thoughts are his real subject. His understand- 
ing broods over that which is " without form 
and void," and "makes it pregnant." He sees 
all things in himself. He hardly ever avails 
himself of remarkable objects or situations, 
but, in general, rejects them as interfering with 
the workings of his own mind, as disturbing 
the smooth, deep, majestic current of his own 
feelings. Thus his descriptions of natural 
scenery are not brought home distinctly to the 
naked eye by forms and circumstances, but 
every object is seen through the medium of 
innumerable recollections, is clothed with the 
haze of imagination like a glittering vapour, is 
obscured with the excess of glory, has the 
shadowy brightness of a waking dream. The 
image is lost in the sentiment, as sound in the 
multiplication of echoes, 

" And visions, as prophetic eyes avow, 
Hang on each leaf, and cling to every bough." 

In describing human nature, Mr. Wordsworth 
equally shuns the common 'vantage-grounds of 
popular story, of striking incident, or fatal 



346 on mr. Wordsworth's u excursion." 

catastrophe, as cheap and vulgar modes of pro- 
ducing an effect. He scans the human race as 
the naturalist measures the earth's zone, with- 
out attending to the picturesque points of view, 
the abrupt inequalities of surface. He contem- 
plates the passions and habits of men, not in 
their extremes, but in the first elements ; their 
follies and vices, not at their height, with all 
their embossed evils upon their heads, but as 
lurking in embryo, — the seeds of the disorder 
inwoven with our very constitution. He only 
sympathizes with those simple forms of feeling 
which mingle at once with his own identity, or 
with the stream of general humanity. To him 
the great and the small are the same ; the near 
and the remote ; what appears, and what only 
is. The general and the permanent, like the 
Platonic ideas, are his only realities. All acci- 
dental varieties and individual contrasts are lost 
in an endless continuity of feeling ; like drops 
of water in the ocean-stream ! An intense in- 
tellectual egotism swallows up every thing. 
Even the dialogues introduced in the present 
volume are soliloquies of the same character, 
taking different views of the subject. The re- 
cluse, the pastor, and the pedlar, are three per- 
sons in one poet. I myself disapprove of 
these " interlocutions between Lucius and Caius" 
as impertinent babbling, where there is no dra- 
matic distinction of character. But the evident 
scope and tendency of Mr. Wodwortrh's mind 



ox mr. Wordsworth's %t excursion. 347 

is the reverse of dramatic. It resists all change 
of character, all variety of scenery, ail the 
bustle, machinery, and pantomime of the stage, 
or of real life, — whatever might relieve, or re- 
lax, or change the direction of its own activity, 
jealous of all competition. The power of his 
mind preys upon itself. It is as if there were 
nothing but himself and the universe. He lives 
in the busy solitude of his own heart -, in the 
deep silence of thought. His imagination lends 
life and feeling only to "the bare trees and 
mountains bare;" peoples the viewless tracts 
of air, and converses with the silent clouds ! 

I could have wished that our author had 
given to his work the form of a didactic poem 
altogether, with only occasional digressions or 
allusions to particular instances. But he has 
chosen to encumber himself with a load of nar- 
rative and description, which sometimes hinders 
the progress and effect of the general reasoning, 
and which, instead of being inwoven with the 
text, would have come in better in plain prose 
as notes at the end of the volume. Mr. Words- 
worth, indeed, says finely, and perhaps as truly 
as finely: — 

" Exchange the shepherd's frock of native grey 
For robes with regal purple tinged ; convert 
The crook into a sceptre ; give the pomp 
Of circumstance ; and here the tragic Muse 
Shall find apt subjects for her highest art. 
Amid the groves, beneath the shadowy hills, 



348 ox mr. Wordsworth's " excursion." 

The generations are prepared ; the pangs, 
The internal pangs are ready ; the dread strife 
Of poor humanity's afflicted will 
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." 

But he immediately declines availing himself 
of these resources of the rustic moralist : for 
the priest, who officiates as " the sad historian 
of the pensive plain/' says in reply : — 

" Our system is not fashioned to preclude 
That sympathy which you for others ask : 
And I could tell, not travelling for my theme 
Beyond the limits of these humble graves, 
Of strange disasters ; but I pass them by, 
Loth to disturb what Heaven hath hushed to peace." 

There is, in fact, in Mr. Wordsworth's mind 
an evident repugnance to admit any thing that 
tells for itself without the interpretation of the 
poet,- — a fastidious antipathy to immediate effect, 
— a systematic unwillingness to share the palm 
with his subject. Where, however, he has a 
subject presented to him, " sueh as the meeting 
soul may pierce," and to which he does not 
grudge to lend the aid of his fine genius, his 
powers of description and fancy seem to be 
little inferior to those of his classical predeces- 
sor, Akenside. Among several others which I 
might select, I give the following passage, 
describing the religion of ancient Greece : — 

" In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretch'd 
On the soft grass through half a summer's day, 



ON MR. WORDS WCRTIl's " EXCURSION/' 349 

With music lulled his indolent repose : 

And in some fit of weariness, if he, 

When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear 

A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds 

Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch'd 

Even from the blazing chariot of the sun, 

A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, 

And filled the illumined groves with ravishment. 

The nightly hunter, lifting up his eyes 

Towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart 

Called on the lovely wanderer, who bestowed 

That timely light, to share his joyous sport : 

And hence, a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs 

Across the lawn and through the darksome grove, 

(Nor unaccompanied with tuneful notes 

By echo multiplied from rock or cave.) 

Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars 

Glance rapidly along the clouded heavens, 

When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked 

His thirst from rill, or gushing fount, and thanked 

The Naiad. — Sun-beams, upon distant hills 

Gliding apace, with shadows in their train, 

Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed 

Into fleet Oreads, sporting visibly. 

The zephyrs fanning as they passed their wings, 

Lacked not for love, fair objects, whom they wooed 

With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque, 

Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, 

From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth 

In the low vale, or on steep mountain side : 

And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns 

Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard ; 

These were the lurking satyrs, a wild brood 

Of gamesome Deities ! or Pan himself 

The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring God. 

The foregoing is one of a succession of splen- 
did passages equally enriched with philosophy 



350 ON MR. WORDSWORTH S " EXCURSION, * 

and poetry, tracing the fictions of Eastern my- 
thology to the immediate intercourse of the 
imagination with Nature, and to the habitual 
propensity of the human mind to endow the 
outward forms of being with life and conscious 
motion. With this expansive and animating 
principle, Mr. Wordsworth has forcibly, but 
somewhat severely, contrasted the cold, narrow, 
lifeless spirit of modern philosophy : — 

" How, shall our great discoverers obtain 
From sense and reason less than these obtained, 
Though far misled ? Shall men for whom our age 
Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared, 
To explore the world without, and world within, 

Be joyless as the blind ? Ambitious souls 

Whom earth at this late season hath produced 
To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh 
The planets in the hollow of their hand ; 
And they who rather dive than soar, whose pains 
Have solved the elements, or analyzed 
The thinking principle — shall they in fact 
Prove a degraded race ? And what avails 
Renown, if their presumption make them such ? 
Inquire of ancient wisdom ; go, demand 
Of mighty nature, if 'twas ever meant 
That we should pry far off, yet be unraised : 
That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore, 
Viewing all objects unremittingly 
In disconnection dead and spiritless ; 
And still dividing and dividing still 
Break down all grandeur, still unsatisfied 
With the perverse attempt, while littleness 
May yet become more little ; waging thus 
An impious warfare with the very life 
Of our own souls ! — And if indeed there be 



on mr. Wordsworth's " excursion. " 351 

An all-pervading spirit, upon whom 

Our dark foundations rest, could he design, 

That this magnificent effect of power, 

The earth we tread, the sky which we behold 

By day, and all the pomp which night reveals, 

That these — and that superior mystery, 

Our vital frame, so fearfully devised, 

And the dread soul within it — should exist 

Only to be examined, pondered, searched, 

Probed, vexed, and criticised — to be prized 

No more than as a mirror that reflects 

To oroud self-love her own intelligence ?" 

From the chemists and metaphysicians our 
author turns to the laughing sage of France, 
Voltaire. " Poor gentleman, it fares no better 
with him, for he's a wit." We cannot, how- 
ever, agree with Mr. Wordsworth, that Candide 
is dull. It is, if our author pleases, " the pro- 
duction of a scoffer's pen," or it is any thing 
but dull. It may not be proper in a grave, dis- 
creet, orthodox, promising young divine, who 
studies his opinions in the contraction or dis- 
tension of his patron's brow, to allow any merit 
to a work like Candide ; but I conceive that it 
would have been more manly in Mr. Words- 
worth, nor do I think it would have hurt the 
cause he espouses, if he had blotted out the 
epithet, after it had peevishly escaped him. 
Whatsoever savours of a little, narrow, in- 
quisitorial spirit, does not sit well on a poet and 
a man of genius. The prejudices of a philo- 
sopher are not natural. There is a frankness 



352 on mr. Wordsworth's " excursion." 

and sincerity of opinion, which is a paramount 
obligation in all questions of intellect, though it 
may not govern the decisions of the spiritual 
courts, who may, however, be safely left to take 
care of their own interests. There is a plain 
directness and simplicity of understanding, 
which is the only security against the evils of 
levity, on the one hand, or of hypocrisy, on the 
other. A speculative bigot is a solecism in the 
intellectual world. I can assure Mr. Words- 
worth that I should not have bestowed so 
much serious consideration on a single voluntary 
perversion of language, but that my respect for 
his character makes me jealous of his smallest 
faults ! 

With regard to his general philippic against 
the contractedness and egotism of philosophical 
pursuits, I only object to its not being carried 
farther. I shall not affirm with Rousseau 
(his authority would perhaps have little weight 
with Mr. Wordsworth) — Tout homme refiechi 
est mediant; but I conceive that the same 
reasoning which Mr. Wordsworth applies so 
eloquently and justly to the natural philosopher 
and metaphysician may be extended to the 
moralist, the divine, the politician, the orator, 
the artist, and even the poet. And why so r 
Because wherever an intense activity is given to 
any one faculty, it necessarily prevents the due 
and natural exercise of others. Hence all those 
professions or pursuits where the mind is ex- 



ox mr. Wordsworth's " excursion." 353 

clusively occupied with the ideas of things as 
they exist in the imagination or understanding, 
as they call for the exercise of intellectual 
activity, and not as they are connected with 
practical good or evil, must check the genial 
expansion of the moral sentiments and social 
affections ; must lead to a cold and dry abstrac- 
tion, as they are found to suspend the animal 
functions and relax the bodily frame. Hence 
the complaint of the want of natural sensibility 
and constitutional warmth of attachment in 
those persons who have been devoted to the 
pursuit of any art or science, — of their restless 
morbidity of temperament, and indifference to 
everything that does not furnish an occasion for 
the display of their mental superiority and the 
gratification of their vanity. The philosophical 
poet himself, perhaps, owes some of his love of 
nature to the opportunity it affords him of 
analysing his own feelings and contemplating 
his own powers, — of making every object about 
him a whole-length mirror to reflect his favour- 
ite thoughts, and of looking down on the frailties 
of others in undisturbed leisure, and from a 
more dignified height. 

One of the most interesting parts of this work 
is that in which the author treats of the French 
Revolution, and of the feelings connected with 
it, in ingenuous minds, in its commencement 
and its progress. The solitary* who, by domes- 
* This word is not English, 

2 A 



354 on mr. wordswokth's "excursion." 

tic calamities and disappointments, had been cut 
off from society, and almost from himself, gives 
the following account of the manner in which 
he was roused from his melancholy : — 

" From that abstraction I was roused — and how ? 
Even as a thoughtful shepherd by a flash 
Of lightning, startled in a gloomy cave 
Of these wild hills. For, lo ! the dread Bastile, 
With all the chambers in its horrid towers, 
Fell to the ground : by violence o'erthrown 
Of indignation ; and with shouts that drowned 
The crash it made in falling ! From the wreck 
A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise, 
The appointed seat of equitable law 
And mild paternal sway. The potent shock 
I felt ; the transformation I perceived, 
As marvellously seized as in that moment 
When, from the blind mist issuing, I beheld 
Glory — beyond all glory ever seen, 
Dazzling the soul ! Meanwhile prophetic harps 
In every grove were ringing, ' War shall cease : 
Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured ? 
Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers, to deck 
The tree of liberty !' — My heart rebounded: 
My melancholy voice the chorus joined. 
Thus was I re- converted to the world ; 
Society became my glittering bride, 
And airy hopes my children. From the depths 
Of natural passion seemingly escaped, 
My soul diffused itself in wide embrace 
Of institutions and the forms of things. 

If with noise 

And acclamation, crowds in open air 
Expressed the tumult of their minds, my voice 
There mingled, heard or not. And in still groves, 
Where mild enthusiasts tuned a pensive lay 



ON MR. WORDSWORTH S ff EXCURSION.' 355 

Of thanks and expectation, in accord 

With their belief, I sang Saturnian rule 

Returned — a progeny of golden years 

Permitted to descend, and bless mankind. 

****** 

Scorn and contempt forbid me to proceed ! 

But history, time's slavish scribe, will tell 

How rapidly the zealots of the cause 

Disbanded — or in hostile ranks appeared : 

Some, tired of honest service ; these outdone, 

Disgusted, therefore, or appalled, by aims 

Of fiercer zealots. — So confusion reigned, 

And the more faithful were compelled to exclaim. 

As Brutus did to virtue, ' Liberty, 

I worshipped thee, and find thee but a shade.' 

Such recantation had for me no charm, 

Nor would I bend to it." 

The subject is afterwards resumed, with the 
same magnanimity and philosophical firmness : — 



" For that other loss, 



The loss of confidence in social man, 

By the unexpected transports of our age 

Carried so high, that every thought — which looked 

Beyond the temporal destiny of the kind — 

To many seemed superfluous ; as no cause 

For such exalted confidence could e'er 

Exist ; so, none is now for such despair. 

The two extremes are equally remote 

From truth and reason ; — do not, then, confound 

One with the other, but reject them both ; 

And choose the middle point, whereon to build 

Sound expectations. This doth he advise 

Who shared at first the illusion. At this day, 

When a Tartarian darkness overspreads 

The groaning nations ; when the impious rule, 

By will, or by established ordinance, 

2 a <2 



356 on mr. Wordsworth's "excursion. 1 * 

Their own dire agents, and constrain the good 
To acts which they abhor ; though I bewail 
This triumph, yet the pity of my heart 
Prevents me not from owning that the law, 
By which mankind now suffers, is most just. 
For by superior energies ; more strict 
Affiance in each other ; faith more firm 
In their unhallowed principles ; the bad 
Have fairly earned a victory o'er the weak, 
The vacillating, inconsistent good." 

In the application of these memorable lines, 
I should, perhaps, differ a little from Mr. 
Wordsworth ; nor can I indulge with him in 
the fond conclusion afterwards hinted at, that 
one day our triumph, the triumph of humanity 
and liberty, may be complete. For this purpose, 
I think several things necessary which are im- 
possible. It is a consummation which cannot 
happen till the nature of things is changed, till 
the many become as united as the one, till ro- 
mantic generosity shall be as common as gross 
selfishness, till reason shall have acquired the 
obstinate blindness of prejudice, till the love of 
power and of change shall no longer goad man 
on to restless action, till passion and will, hope 
and fear, love and hatred, and the objects proper 
to excite them, that is, alternate good and evil, 
shall no longer sway the bosoms and businesses 
of men. All things move, not in progress, but 
in a ceaseless round ; our strength lies in our 
weakness 5 our virtues are built on our vices ; 
our faculties are as limited as our being; nor 



ON MR. WORDSWORTH'S "EXCURSION." 357 

can we lift man above his nature more than 
above the earth he treads. But though I can- 
not weave over again the airy, unsubstantial 
dream, which reason and experience have dis- 
pelled, 

" What though the radiance, which was once so bright, 
Be now for ever taken from my sight, 
Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower :"-— 

yet I will never cease, nor be prevented from 
returning on the wings of imagination to that 
bright dream of my youth ; that glad dawn of 
the day-star of liberty -, that spring time of the 
world, in which the hopes and expectations of 
the human race seemed opening in the same gay 
career with my own $ when France called her 
children to partake her equal blessings beneath 
her laughing skies 5 when the stranger was met 
in all her villages with dance and festive songs, 
in celebration of a new and golden era 5 and 
when, to the retired and contemplative student, 
the prospects of human happiness and glory were 
seen ascending like the steps of Jacob's ladder, 
in bright and never-ending succession. The 
dawn of that day was suddenly overcast ; that 
season of hope is past ; it is fled with the other 
dreams of my youth, which I cannot recal, 
but has left behind it traces, which are not to be 
effaced by Birth-day and Thanksgiving odes, or 
the chaunting of Te Deums in all the churches 



358 ON MR. WORDSWORTH S u EXCURSION." 

of Christendom. To those hopes eternal regrets 
are due 3 to those who maliciously and wilfully 
blasted them, in the fear that they might be ac- 
complished, I feel no less what I owe — hatred 
and scorn as lasting ! 

Mr. Wordsworth's writings exhibit all the 
internal power, without the external form, of 
poetry. He has scarcely any of the pomp and 
decoration and scenic effect of poetry : no gor- 
geous palaces, nor solemn temples, awe the 
imagination 3 no cities rise " with glistering spires 
and pinnacles adorned 5" we meet with no knights 
pricked forth on airy steeds ; no hair- breadth 
'scapes and perilous accidents by flood or field. 
Either from the predominant habit of his mind 
not requiring the stimulus of outward impres- 
sions, or from the want of an imagination teeming 
with various forms, he takes the common every 
day events and objects of nature, or rather seeks 
those that are the most simple and barren of 
effect ; but he adds to them a weight of interest 
from the resources of his own mind, which makes 
the most insignificant things serious and even 
formidable. All other interests are absorbed in 
the deeper interest of his own thoughts, and find 
the same level. His mind magnifies the littleness 
of his subject, and raises its meanness ; lends it 
his strength, and clothes it with borrowed gran- 
deur. With him, a mole-hill, covered with wild 
thyme, assumes the importance of u the great 
vision of the guarded mount :" a puddle is filled 



ON MR. WORDSWORTH S "EXCURSION. 359 

with preternatural faces, and agitated with the 
fiercest storms of passion. 

The extreme simplicity which some persons 
have objected to in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, is 
to be found only in the subject and the style : the 
sentiments are subtle and profound. In the 
latter respect, his poetry is as much above the 
common standard or capacity, as in the other it 
is below it. His poems bear a distant resem- 
blance to some of Rembrandt's landscapes, who s 
more than any other painter, created the medium 
through which he saw nature, and out of the 
stump of an old tree, a break in the sky, and a 
bit of water, could produce an effect almost 
miraculous. 

Mr. Wordsworth s poems in general • are the 
history of a refined and contemplative mind, con- 
versant only with itself and nature, An intense 
feeling of the associations of this kind is the pe- 
culiar and characteristic feature of all his pro- 
ductions. He has described the love of nature 
better than any other poet. This sentiment, inly 
felt in all its force, and sometimes carried to an 
excess, is the source both of his strength and of 
his weakness. — However I may sympathize 
with Mr. Wordsworth in his attachment to groves 
and fields, I cannot extend the same admiration 
to their inhabitants, or to the manners of a 
country life in general. I go along with him, 
while he is the subject of his own narrative, but 
I take leave of him when he makes pedlars 



360 on mr. Wordsworth's "excursion. " 

and ploughmen his heroes and the interpreters 
of his sentiments. It is, I think, getting into 
low company, and company, besides, that I do 
not like. I take Mr. Wordsworth himself for 
a great poet, a fine moralist, and a deep philoso- 
pher ; but if he insists on introducing me to a 
friend of his, a parish clerk, or the barber of the 
village, who is as wise as himself, 1 must be 
excused if I draw back with some little want 
of cordial faith. I am satisfied with the friend- 
ship which subsisted between Parson Adams and 
Joseph Andrews. — The author himself lets out 
occasional hints that all is not as it should be 
among these northern Arcadians. Though, in 
general, he professes to soften the harsher features 
of rustic vice, he has given us one picture of 
depraved and inveterate selfishness, which I 
apprehend could only be found among the inha- 
bitants of these boasted mountain districts. The 
account of one of his heroines concludes as 
follows : 

" A sudden illness seized her in the strength 
Of life's autumnal season. — Shall I tell 
How on her bed of death the matron lay, 
To Providence submissive, so she thought ; 
But fretted, vexed, and wrought upon — almost 
To anger, by the malady that griped 
Her prostrate frame with unrelaxing power, 
As the tierce eagle fastens on the lamb. 
She prayed, she moaned — her husband's sister watched 
Her dreary pillow, waited on her needs ; 
And yet the very sound of that kind foot 



on mr. Wordsworth's " excursion." 361 

Was anguish to her ears ! — ' And must she rule 
Sole mistress of this house when I am gone ? 
Sit by my lire — possess what I possessed — 
Tend what I tended — calling it her own !' 
Enough ; — I fear too much. — Of nobler feeling 
Take this example : — One autumnal evening, 
While she was yet in prime of health and strength. 
I well remember, while I passed her door, 
Musing with loitering step, and upward eye 
Turned tow'rds the planet Jupiter, that hung 
Above the centre of the vale, a voice 
Roused me, her voice ; — it said, s That glorious star 
In its untroubled element will shine 
As now it shines, when we ar^ laid in earth, 
And safe from all our sorrows. 5 — She is safe, 
And her uncharitable acts, I trust, 
And harsh unkindnesses, are all forgiven ; 
Though, in this vale, remembeied with deep awe !" 

I think it is pushing our love of the ad- 
miration of natural objects a good deal too far 
to make it a set-off against a story like the 
preceding. 

All country people hate each other. They 
have so little comfort that they envy their neigh- 
bours the smallest pleasure or advantage, and 
nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. 
From not being accustomed to enjoyment, they 
become hardened and averse to it— stupid, for 
want of thought— selfish, for want of society, 
There is nothing good to be had in the country, 
or, if there is, they will not let you have it. They 
had rather injure themselves than oblige any one 
else. Their common mode of life is a system of 



362 on mr. Wordsworth's "excursion." 

wretchedness and self-denial, like what we read 
of among barbarous tribes. You live out of the 
world. You cannot get your tea and sugar with- 
out sending to the next town for it : you pay 
double, and have it of the worst quality. The 
small-beer is sure to be sour — the milk skimmed 
— the meat bad, or spoiled in the cooking. You 
cannot do a single thing you like 5 you cannot 
walk out or sit at home, or write or read, or think 
or look as if you did, without being subject to 
impertinent curiosity. The apothecary annoys 
you with his complaisance 5 the parson with his 
superciliousness. If you are poor, you are de- 
spised 5 if you are rich, you are feared and hated. 
If you do any one a favour, the whole neigh- 
bourhood is, up in arms ; the clamour is like 
that of a rookery ; and the person himself, it is 
ten to one, laughs at you for your pains, and 
takes the first opportunity of shewing you that 
he labours under no uneasy sense of obligation. 
There is a perpetual round of mischief-making 
and backbiting, for want of any better amuse- 
ment. There are no shops, no taverns, no 
theatres, no opera, no concerts, no pictures, no 
public buildings, no crowded streets, no noise 
of coaches, or of courts of law, — neither cour- 
tiers nor courtesans, no literary parties, no 
fashionable routs, no society, no books, or know- 
ledge of books. Vanity and luxury are the civi- 
lizers of the world, and sweeteners of human life. 
Without objects either of pleasure or action, it 



on mr. Wordsworth's '•'excursion." 363 

grows harsh and crabbed : the mind becomes 
stagnant, the affections callous, and the eye dull. 
Man left to himself soon degenerates into a very 
disagreeable person. Ignorance is always bad 
enough ; but rustic ignorance is intolerable. 
Aristotle has observed that tragedy purifies the 
affections by terror and pity. If so, a company 
of tragedians should be established at the 
public expense, in every village or hundred, as 
a better mode of education than either Bell's 
or Lancaster's. The benefits of knowledge are 
never so well understood as from seeing the ef- 
fects of ignorance, in their naked, undisguised 
state, upon the common country people. Their 
selfishness and insensibility are perhaps less 
owing to the hardships- and privations, which 
make them, like people out at sea in a boat, 
ready to devour one another, than to their hav- 
ing no idea of any thing beyond themselves and 
their immediate sphere of action. They have no 
knowledge of, and consequently can take no 
interest in, any thing which is not an object of 
their senses, and of their daily pursuits. They 
hate all strangers, and have generally a nick- 
name for the inhabitants of the next village. 
The two young noblemen in Guzman d'Alfaraehe, 
who went to visit their mistresses only a league 
out of Madrid, were set upon by the peasants, 
who came round them calling out, (i a wolf,'" 
Those who have no enlarged or liberal ideas 
can have no disinterested or generous sentiments. 



364 on mr. Wordsworth's "excursion." 

Persons who are in the habit of reading novels 
and romances are compelled to take a deep 
interest, and to have their affections strongly 
excited by fictitious characters and imaginary 
situations ; their thoughts and feelings are con- 
stantly carried out of themselves, to persons 
they never saw, and things that never existed : 
history enlarges the mind, by familiarizing us 
with the great vicissitudes of human affairs, and 
the catastrophes of states and kingdoms ; the 
study of morals accustoms us to refer our actions 
to a general standard of right and wrong • and 
abstract reasoning, in general, strengthens the 
love of truth, and produces an inflexibility of 
principle which cannot stoop to low trick and 
cunning. Books, in Lord Bacon's phrase, are 
" a discipline of humanity." Country people 
have none of these advantages, nor any others 
to supply the place of them. Having no circu- 
lating libraries to exhaust their love of the mar- 
vellous, they amuse themselves with fancying 
the disasters and disgraces of their particular 
acquaintance. Having no hump-backed Richard 
to excite their wonder and abhorrence, they 
make themselves a bug-bear of their own, out 
of the first obnoxious person they can lay their 
hands on. Not having the fictitious distresses 
and gigantic crimes of poetry to stimulate their 
imagination and their passions, they vent their 
whole stock of spleen, malice, and invention, on 
their friends and next-door neighbours. They 



ox mr. Wordsworth's "excursion." 365 

get up a little pastoral drama at home, with fan- 
cied events, but real characters. All their spare 
time is spent in manufacturing and propagating 
the lie for the day, which does its office, and 
expires. The next day is spent in the same 
manner. It is thus that they embellish the 
simplicity of rural life ! The common people in 
civilized countries are a kind of domesticated 
savages. They have not the wild imagination, 
the passions, the fierce energies, or dreadful 
vicissitudes of the savage tribes, nor have they 
the leisure, the indolent enjoyments and roman- 
tic superstitions, which belonged to the pastoral 
life in milder climates, and more remote periods 
of society. They are taken out of a state of 
nature, without being put in possession of the 
refinements of art. The customs and institu- 
tions of society cramp their imaginations with- 
out giving them knowledge. If the inhabitants 
of the mountainous districts described by Mr. 
Wordsworth are less gross and sensual than 
others, they are more selfish. Their egotism 
becomes more concentrated, as they are more 
insulated, and their purposes more inveterate, 
as they have less competition to struggle with. 
The weight of matter which surrounds them 
crushes the finer sympathies. Their minds be- 
come hard and cold, like the rocks which they 
cultivate. The immensity of their mountains 
makes the human form appear little and insig- 
nificant. Men are seen crawling between heaven 



3G6 on mr. Wordsworth's "excursion." 

and earth, like insects to their graves. Nor do 
they regard one another any more than flies on 
a wall. Their physiognomy expresses the ma- 
terialism of their character, which has only one 
principle — rigid self-will. They move on with 
their eyes and foreheads fixed, looking neither to 
the right nor to the left, with a heavy slouch in 
their gait, and seeming as if nothing would di- 
vert them from their path. I do not admire 
this plodding pertinacity, always directed to the 
main chance. There is nothing which excites 
so little sympathy, in my mind, as exclusive 
selfishness. — If my theory is wrong, at least it 
is taken from pretty close observation, and is, 
I think, confirmed by Mr. Wordsworth's own 
account. 

Of the stories contained in the latter part of 
the volume, I like that of the Whig and Ja- 
cobite friends ; and of the good knight, Sir Alfred 
Irthing, the best. The last reminded me of a 
fine sketch of a similar character in the beauti- 
ful poem of Hart Leap Well. To conclude, — If 
the skill with which the poet had chosen his 
materials had been equal to the power which he 
has undeniably exerted over them ; if the objects 
(whether persons or things) which he makes use 
of as the vehicle of his sentiments, had been 
such as to convey them in all their depth and 
force; then the production before me might indeed 
"have proved a monument," as he himself wishes 
it, worthy of the author, and of his country. 



on mr. wordsworth's " excursion." S67 

Whether, as it is, this very original and power- 
ful performance may not rather remain like one 
of those stupendous, but half-finished structures, 
which have been suffered to moulder into decay, 
because the cost and labour attending them ex- 
ceeded their use or beauty, I feel that it would 
be presumptuous in me to determine. 



--- 



IV. 

POPE, LORD BYRON, AND MR. BOWLES.* 

This is a very proper letter for a lord to write 
to his bookseller, and for Mr. Murray to show 
about among his friends, as it contains some 
dry rubs at Mr. Bowles, and some good hits at 
Mr. Southey and his " invariable principles." 
There is some good hating and some good 
writing in it, some coarse jests and some dog- 
matical assertions ; but that it is by any means 
a settler of the question is what we are in all 
due form inclined to doubt. His Lordship, as 
a poet, is a little headstrong and self-willed, a 
spoiled child of nature and fortune : his phi- 
losophy and criticism have a tincture of the 
same spirit : he doles out his opinions with a 

* Letter to *** ***** on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's 
Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope. By the 
Right Hon. Lord Byron. Third Edition. Murray. 



368 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

great deal of frankness and spleen, saying, 
" This I like, that I loathe!" but he does not 
trouble himself, or the reader, with his reasons, 
any more than he accounts to his servants for 
the directions he gives them. This might seem 
too great a compliment in his Lordship to the 
public. 

All this pribble-prabble about Pope, and Milton, 
and Shakspeare, and what foreigners say of us, 
and the Venus, and Antinous, and the Acropolis, 
and the Grand Canal at Venice, and the Turkish 
fleet, and Falconer's Shipwreck, and ethics, and 
ethical poetry (with the single exception of some 
bold picturesque sketches in the poet's best prose 
style) is what might be talked by any Bond-street 
lounger of them all, after a last night's debauch, 
in the intervals between the splashings of the 
soda-water and the acid taste of the port wine 
rising in the mouth. It is no better than that. 
If his Lordship had sent it in from Long's, or 
the Albany, to be handed about in Albemarle- 
street, in slips as he wrote it, it would have 
been very well. But all the way from Ravenna, 
cannot he contrive to send us something better 
than his own ill humour and our own common- 
places — than the discovery that Pope was a 
poet, and that Cowper was none ; and the old 
story that Canova, in forming a statue, takes a 
hand from one, a foot from another, and a nose 
from a third, and so makes out the idea of per- 
fect beauty ! (I would advise his Lordship to 



AND MR. BOWLES. 369 

say less about this subject of virtu, for he knows 
little about it ; and, besides, his perceptions are 
at variance with his theories.) In truth, his 
Lordship has the worst of this controversy, 
though he throws out a number of pert, smart, 
flashy things, with the air of a man who sees 
company on subjects of taste, while his reverend 
antagonist, who is the better critic and logician 
of the two, goes prosing on in a tone of ob- 
sequious pertinacity and sore pleasantry, as if 
he were sitting (an unwelcome guest) at his 
lordship's table, and were awed, yet galled, by 
the cavalier assumption of patrician manners. 
I cannot understand these startling voluntaries, 
played off before the public on the ground of 
personal rank, nor the controversial under- song, 
like the drone of a bag-pipe, that forms a 
tedious accompaniment to them. As Jem 
Belcher, when asked if he did not feel a little 
awkward at facing Gamble, the tall Irishman, 
made answer, " An' please ye, sir, when I am 
strip t to my shirt, I am afraid of no man ;" — so 
I would advise Mr. Bowies, in a question of 
naked argument, to fear no man, and to let no 
man bite his thumb at him. If his Lordship 
were to invite his brother-poet to his house, and 
to eke out a sour jest by the flavour of Monte- 
Pulciano or Frontiniac, — if in the dearth of 
argument he were to ply his friend's weak side 
with rich sauces and well-seasoned hospitality, 
" Ah! ca est bon, ah! goutez ca .'"— if he were 



270 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

to point, in illustration of Pope's style, to the 
marble pillars, the verandas,, the pier glasses, 
the classic busts, the flowering dessert, and 
were to exclaim, " You see, my dear Bowles, 
the superiority of art over nature, the triumph 
of polished life over Gothic barbarism ; we 
nave here neither the ghosts nor fairies of Shak- 
speare, nor Milton's Heaven, nor his Hell, yet 
we contrive to do without them $" — it might 
require Parson Supple's command of counte- 
nance to smile off this uncourteous address -, 
but the divine would not have to digest such 
awkward raillery on an empty stomach — he 
would have his quid pro quo : his Lordship 
would have paid for the liberty of using his 
privilege of peerage. But why any man should 
carry the role of his Lordship's chaplain out 
of his Lordship's house, is what I see no 
reason for. 

Lord Byron, in the Preface to his Tragedy, 
complains that Horace Walpole has had hard 
measure dealt him by the critics, " firstly, 
because he was a lord, and secondly, because he 
was a gentleman." I do not know how the 
case may stand between the public and a dead 
nobleman 5 but a living lord has every reasonable 
allowance made him, and can do what no one 
else can. If Lord Byron chooses to make a 
bad joke, by means of an ill-spent pun, it is a 
condescension in his Lordship : — if he puts off a 
set of smart assertions and school-boy instances 



AND MR. BOWLES. 3/1 

for pithy proofs, it is not because he is not able, 
but because he cannot be at the pains of going 
deeper into the question : — if he is rude to an 
antagonist, it is construed into agreeable fami- 
liarity ; any notice from so great a man appears 
like a favour : — if he tells or recommends " a 
tale of bawdry," he is not to be tied down by 
the petty rules which restrict common men : — - 
if he publishes a work which is thought of too 
equivocal a description for the delicate air of 
Albemarle- street, his Lordship's own name in 
the title-page is sufficient to back it without 
the formality of a bookseller's 3 if a wire-drawn 
tragedy of his is acted, in spite of his protesta- 
tions against such an appeal to the taste of a 
vulgar audience, the storm of pitiless damnation 
is not let loose upon it, because it is felt that it 
would fall harmless on so high and proud a 
head 3 the gilded coronet serves as a conductor 
to carry off the lightning of popular criticism, 
which might blast the merely laurelled bard ; 
the blame, the disappointment, the flat effect, is 
thrown upon the manager, upon the actors — ■ 
upon anybody but the noble poet ! This sound- 
ing title swells the mouth of Fame, and lends 
her voice a thousand circling echoes : the rank 
of the author, and the public charity extended 
to him, as he does not want it, cover a multitude 
of sins. What does his lordship mean, then, by 
this whining over the neglect of Horace Wal- 
pole, — this uncalled-for sympathy with the 

2 b 2 



372 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

faded lustre of patrician and gentlemanly pre- 
tensions ? Has he had only half his fame? — or 
does he already feel, with morbid anticipation, 
the retiring ebb of that overwhelming tide of 
popularity which, having been raised too high 
by adventitious circumstances, is lost in flats 
and shallows, as soon as their influence is with- 
drawn ? Lord Byron has been twice as much 
talked of as he would have been had he not 
been Lord Byron. His rank and genius have 
been happily placed " each other's beams to 
share," and both together, by their mutually 
reflected splendour, may be said to have melted 
the public coldness into the very wantonness of 
praise : the faults of the man (real or supposed) 
have only given a dramatic interest to his works. 
Whence, then, this repining, this ungracious 
cavilling, this got-up ill- humour ? We load his 
Lordship with ecstatic admiration, with unqua- 
lified ostentatious eulogies ; and he throws them 
stifling back in our face : he thanks us with 
cool, cutting contempt: he asks us for our 
voices, " our sweet voices,'' like Coriolanus ; 
and, like Coriolanus, disdains us for the un- 
wholesome gift. Why, then, does he ask for 
it ? If, as a lord, he holds in contempt and ab- 
horrence the willing, delighted homage, which 
the public pay to the poet, let him retire and 
feed the pride of birth in stately solitude, or 
take his place among his equals : but if he does 
not find this enough, and wants our wondering 



AND MR. BOWLES. 373 

tribute of applause to satisfy his craving vanity, 
and make him something more than a mere 
vulgar lord among hundreds of other lords, why 
dash the cup of delicious poison which, at his 
uneasy request, we tender him, to the ground, 
with indignant reckless hands, and tell us that 
he scorns equally our censure or our praise ? 
If he looks upon both as equal impertinence, 
he can easily escape out of the reach of both 
by ceasing to write; we shall in that case soon 
cease to think of his Lordship : but if he can- 
not do without our good opinion, why affect 
all this coyness, coldness, and contempt ? If he 
says he writes not to please us, but to live by 
us, that only alters the nature of the obligation, 
and he might still be civil to Mr. Murray's 
customers. Whether he is independent of 
public opinion, or dependent on it, he need not 
be always sending his readers to Coventry. 
When we come to offer him our demonstrations 
of good will, he should not kick us down stairs. 
If he persists in this humour, the distaste may 
in time " become mutual." 

Before we proceed, there is one thing in 
which we must say we heartily agree with Lord 
Byron ; and that is the ridicule with which he 
treats Mr. Bowles's editorial inquisition into the 
moral character of Pope. It is a pure piece of 
clerical priggism. If Pope was not free from 
vice, we should like to know who is. He was 
one of the most faultless of poets, both in his 



374 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

life and in his writings. We should not care to 
throw the first stone at him. We do not wonder 
at Lord Byron's laughing outright at Mr. 
Bowles's hysterical horrors at poor Pope's 
platonic peccadillos, nor at his being a little 
impatient of the other's attempt to make him- 
self a make-believe character of perfection out 
of the "most small faults" he could rake up 
against the reputation of an author, whom he 
was bound either not to edit or not to injure. 
But we think his Lordship turns the tables upon 
the divine, and gets up into the reading-desk 
himself, without the proper canonical credentials 
when he makes such a fuss as he does about 
didactic or moral poetry as the highest of all 
others, because moral truth and moral conduct 
are of such vast and paramount concernment in 
human life. But because they are such good 
things in themselves, does it follow that they 
are the better for being put into rhyme ? We 
see no connexion between " ends of verse, and 
sayings of philosophers." This reasoning re- 
minds us of the critic who said that the only 
poetry he knew of, good for any thing, was the 
four lines, beginning " Thirty days hath Septem- 
ber, April, June, and November," for that these 
were really of some use in finding out the 
number of days in the different months of the 
year. The rules of arithmetic are important in 
many respects, but we do not know that they 
are the fittest subjects of poetry. Besides, Pope 



AND MR. BOWLES. 375 

was not the only moral poet, nor are we sure 
that we understand his moral system, or that 
Lord Byron understands it, or that he under- 
stood it himself. Addison paraphrased the 
Psalms, and Blackmore sung the Creation : yet 
Pope has written a lampoon upon the one, and 
put the other in his Dunciad. Mr. Bowles has 
numbers of manuscript sermons by him, the 
morality of which, we will venture to say, is 
quite as pure, as orthodox, as that of the un- 
published cantos of Don Juan ; yet we doubt 
whether Mr. Murray, the Maecenas of poetry 
and orthodoxy, would give as much for the one 
as for the other. We do not look for the 
flowers of fancy in moral treatises, nor for a 
homily in his Lordship's irregular stanzas. The 
Decalogue, as a practical prose composition, or 
as a body of moral laws and precepts, is of 
sufficient weight and authority ; but we should 
not regard the putting of this into heroic verse 
as an effort of the highest poetry. That " Stern- 
hold and Hopkins had great qualms" is no im- 
putation on the pious raptures of the Hebrew 
bard: and we suspect his Lordship himself 
would object to the allegory in Spenser, as a 
drawback on the poetry, if it is in other re- 
spects to his Lordship's taste, which is more 
than we can pretend to determine. The Noble 
Letter-writer thus moralizes on this subject, and 
transposes the ordinary critical canons some- 
what arbitrarily and sophistically. 



3/6 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

u The depreciation of Pope is partly founded 
upon a false idea of the dignity of his order of 
poetry, to which he has partly contributed by 
the ingenuous boast. 

That not in Fancy's maze he wandered long, 
But stoop'd to Truth, and morahVd his song. 

He should have written s rose to truth.' In my 
mind the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, 
as the highest of all earthly objects must be 
moral truth. Religion does not make a part 
of my subject; it is something beyond human 
powers, and has failed in all human hands except 
Milton's and Dante's, and even Dante's powers 
are involved in his delineation of human pas- 
sions, though in supernatural circumstances. 
What made Socrates the greatest of men ? His 
moral truth — his ethics. What proved Jesus 
Christ the Son of God hardly less than his 
miracles ? His moral precepts. And if ethics 
have made a philosopher the first of men, and 
have not been disdained as an adjunct to his 
Gospel by the Deity himself, are we to be told 
that ethical poetry, or didactic poetry, or by 
whatever name you term it^ whose object is to 
make men better and wiser, is not the very first 
order of poetry 5 and are we to be told this too 
by one of the priesthood? It requires more 
mind, more wisdom, more power, than all the 
r forests' that ever were ' walked' for their 
' de cription' and all the epics that ever were 



AND MR. BOWLES. 377 

founded upon fields of battle. The Georgics are 
indisputably, and, I believe, undispuiedly , even a 
finer poem than the iEneid. Virgil knew this : 
he did not order them to be burnt. 

The proper study of mankind is man. 

"It is the fashion of the day to lay great 
stress upon what they call ' imagination' and 
' invention/ — the two commonest of qualities : 
an Irish peasant, with a little whiskey in his 
head, will imagine and invent more than would 
furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius 
had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, 
we should have had a far superior poem to any 
now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the 
first of Latin poems. What then has ruined 
it ? His ethics. Pope has not this defect : his 
moral is as pure as his poetry is glorious." p. 42. 

Really this is very inconsequential, incongru- 
ous reasoning. An Irish peasant, with a little 
whiskey in his head, would not fall upon more 
blunders, contradictions, and defective conclu- 
sions. Lord Byron talks of the ethical systems 
of Socrates and Jesus Christ. What made the 
former the great man he supposes ?— The in- 
vention of his system — the discovery of sublime 
moral truths. Does Lord Byron mean to say 
that the mere repetition of the same precepts 
in prose, or the turning of them into verse, will 
make others as great, or will make a great man 
at all? The two things compared are wholly 



378 POPE, LORD BYROX, 

disparates. The finding out the 48th proposi- 
tion in Euclid made Pythagoras a great man. 
Shall we say that the putting this into a grave, 
didactic distich would make either a great 
mathematician or a great poet r It would do 
neither the one nor the other 3 though, according 
to Lord Byron, this distich would belong to the 
highest class of poetry, " because it would do 
that in verse which one of the greatest of men 
had wished to .accomplish i«i prose." Such is 
the way in which his Lordship transposes the 
common sense of the question, — because it is 
his humour ! The value of any moral truth de- 
pends on the philosophic invention implied in it. 
But this rests with the first author, and the 
general idea, which forms the basis of didactic 
poetry, remains the same, through all its me- 
chanical transmissions afterwards. The merit 
of the ethical poet must therefore consist in 
his manner of adorning and illustrating a num- 
ber of these general truths which are not his 
own, that is, in the poetical invention and ima- 
gination he brings to the subject, as Mr. Bowles 
has well shown, with respect to the episodes in 
the Essay on Man, the description of the poor 
Indian, and the lamb doomed to death, which 
are all the unsophisticated reader ever remem- 
bers of that much-talked-of production. Lord 
Byron clownishly chooses to consider all poetry 
but what relates to this ethical or didactic truth 
as "a lie." Is Lear a lie? Or does his Lord- 



AND MR. BOWLES. 3/9 

ship prefer the story, or the moral, in iEsop's 
Fables ? He asks " why must the poet mean the 
liar, the feigner, the tale-teller ? A man may 
make and create better things than these." — 
He may make and create better things than a 
common -place, and he who does not makes 
and creates nothing. The ethical or didactic 
poet necessarily repeats after others, because 
general truths and maxims are limited. The 
individual instances and illustrations, which his 
Lordship qualifies as " lies," " feigning," and 
"tale-telling," are infinite, and give endless 
scope to the genius of the true poet. The rank 
of poetry is to be judged of by the truth and 
purity of the moral — so we find it "in the 
bond," — and yet Cowper, we are told, was no 
poet. Is there any keeping in this, or is it 
merely an air ? Again, we are given to understand 
that didactic poetry " requires more mind, more 
power than all the descriptive or epic poetry 
that ever w T as written:" and as a proof of this, 
his Lordship lays it down that the Georgics are 
a finer poem than the iEneid. We do not per- 
ceive the inference here. "Virgil knew r this : 
he did not order them to be burnt. 

The proper study of mankind is man." 

Does our author mean that this was Virgil's 
reason for liking his pastoral poetry better than 
his description of Dido and iEneas ? But farther, 
there is a Latin poem (that of Lucretius) supe- 



380 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

rior even to the Georgics ; nay, it would have 
been so to any poem now in existence, but for 
one unlucky circumstance. And what is that ? 
" Its ethics !" So that ethics have spoiled the 
finest poem in the world. This is the rub that 
makes didactic poetry come in such a question- 
able shape. If original, like Lucretius, there 
will be a difference of opinion about it. If trite 
and acknowledged, like Pope, however pure, 
there will be little valuable in it. It is the glory 
and the privilege of poetry to be conversant 
about those truths of nature and the heart that 
are at once original and self-evident. His Lord- 
ship ought to have known this. In the same pas- 
sage, he speaks of imagination and invention as 
" the two commonest of qualities." We will tell 
his Lordship what is commoner — the want of 
them. "An Irish peasant," he adds, "with a 
little whiskey in his head, will imagine and invent 
more than" — (What ? Homer, Spenser, and 
Ariosto } No: but than) — "would furnish forth 
a modern poem." That we will not dispute. But 
at any rate, when sober the next morning, he 
would be as " full of wise saws and modern in- 
stances" as his Lordship ; and in either case, 
equally positive, tetchy, and absurd ! 

His Lordship, throughout his pamphlet, makes 
a point of contradicting Mr. Bowles, and, it 
would seem, of contradicting himself. He can- 
not be said to have any opinions of his own, 
but whatever any one else advances, he denies 



AND MR. BOWLES. 381 

out of mere spleen and rashness. <( He hates 
the word invariable" and not without reason. 
u What is there of human, be it poetry, philo- 
sophy, wit, wisdom, science, power, glory, mind, 
matter, life, or death, which is invariable V 3 — 
There is one of the particulars in this enumera- 
tion which seems pretty invariable, which is 
death. One would think that the principles of 
poetry are so too, notwithstanding his peevish 
disclaimer : for towards the conclusion of this 
letter he sets up Pope as a classic model, and 
considers all modern deviations from it as 
grotesque and barbarous. 

" They have raised a mosque by the side of a 
Grecian temple of the purest architecture ; and, 
more barbarous than the barbarians from whose 
practice I have borrowed the figure, they are not 
contented with their own grotesque edifice, unless 
they destroy the prior and purely beautiful fabric 
which preceded,* and w r hich shames them and 
theirs for ever and ever/' 

Lord Byron has here substituted his own in- 
variable principles for Mr. Bowles's, which he 
hates as bad as Mr. Southey's variable politics. 
Will nothing please his Lordship — neither dull 
fixtures nor shining weather-cocks r — We might 
multiply instances of a want of continuous rea- 



* We have " purest architecture' ' just before ; and " the 
prior fabric which preceded," is rather more than an 
inelegant pleonasm. 



332 POPE, LORD BYROX, 

soning, if we were fond of this sort of petty 
cavilling. Yet we do not know that there is 
any better quarry in the book. Why does his 
Lordship tells us that "ethical poetry is the 
highest of all poetry," and yet that "Petrarch 
the sonnetteer" is esteemed by good judges the 
very highest poet of Italy ? Mr. Bowles is a 
sonnetteer, and a very good one. Why does he 
assert that " the poet who executes the best is 
the highest, whatever his department/' and then 
affirm in the next page that didactic poetry " re- 
quires more mind, more wisdom, more power, 
than all the forests that ever were walked for 
their description j" and then again, two pages 
after, that " a good poet can make a silk purse 
of a sow's ear :" that is, as he interprets it, 
" can imbue a pack of cards with more poetry 
than inhabits the forests of America?" That's 
a Non Sequitur, as Partridge has it. Why, con- 
tending that all subjects are alike indifferent to 
the genuine poet, does he turn round upon him- 
self, and assume that " the sun shining upon a 
warming pan cannot be made sublime or poe- 
tical ?" Why does he say that " there is nothing 
in nature like the bust of the Antinous, except 
the Venus," which is not in nature ?* Why does 
he call the first " that wonderful creation of per- 
fect beauty," when it is a mere portrait, and on 
that account so superior to his favourite coxcomb 

* See Mr, Bowles's Two Letters. 



AND MK, BOWLES. 3S3 

the Apollo r Why does he state that " more poe- 
try cannot be gathered into existence" than we 
here see, and yet that this poetry arises neither 
from nature nor moral exaltedness ; Mr. Bowles 
and he being at issue on this very point, viz. 
the one affirming that the essence of poetry is 
derived from nature, and his Lordship, that it 
consists in moral truth? Why does he consider a 
shipwreck as an artificial incident r Why does he 
make the excellence of Falconer's Shipwreck 
consist in its technicalities, and not in its faithful 
description of common feelings and inevitable 
calamity } Why does he say all this, and much 
more, which he should not r Why does he write 
prose at all ? Yet, in spite of all this trash, there 
is one passage for which we forgive him, and 
here it is. 

" The truth is, that in these days the grand 
primum mobile of England is cant ; cant political, 
cant poetical, cant religious, cant moral ; but 
always cant, multiplied through all the varieties 
of life. It is the fashion, and, while it lasts, will 
be too powerful for those who can only exist by 
taking the tone of the times. I say cant, because 
it is a thing of words, without the smallest in- 
fluence upon human actions 5 the English being 
no wiser, no better, and much poorer, and more 
divided among themselves, as well as far less 
moral, than they were before the prevalence of 
this verbal decorum." These words should be 
written in letters of gold, as the testimony of a 



384 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

lofty poet to a great moral truth, and we can 
hardly have a quarrel with the writer of them. 

There are three questions which form the 
subject of the present pamphlet 5 viz. What is 
poetical } What is natural ? What is artificial ? 
And we get an answer to none of them. The 
controversy, as it is carried on between the chief 
combatants, is much like a dispute between two 
artists, one of whom should maintain that blue 
is the only colour fit to paint with, and the other 
that yellow alone ought ever to be used. Much 
might be said on both sides, but little to the 
purpose. Mr. Campbell leads off the dance, and 
launches a ship as a beautiful and poetical arti- 
ficial object. But he so loads it with patriotic, 
natural, and foreign associations, and the sails 
are " so perfumed that the winds are love-sick," 
that Mr. Bowles darts upon and seizes it as con- 
traband to art, swearing that it is no longer 
the work of the shipwright, but of Mr. Camp- 
bell's lofty poetic imagination ; and dedicates its 
stolen beauty to the right owners, the sun, the 
winds, and the waves. Mr. Campbell, in his 
eagerness to make all sure, having overstepped 
the literal mark, presses no farther into the 
controversy 5 but Lord Byron, who is *' like an 
Irishman in a row, any body's customer," carries 
it on w r ith good polemical hardihood, and runs 
a very edifying parallel between the ship without 
the sun, the winds and waves, — and the sun, the 
winds, and waves without the ship. " The sun," 



AND MR. BOWLES. SS5 

says Mr. Bowles, " is poetical, by your Lordship's 
admission/' We think it would have been so 
without it. But his Lordship contends that ''the 
sun would no longer be poetical, if it did not 
shine on ships, or pyramids, or fortresses, and 
other works of art," (he expressly excludes 
" footmen's liveries" and " brass warming-pans" 
from among those artificial objects that reflect 
new splendour on the eye of Heaven) — to which 
Mr. Bowles replies, that let the sun but shine, 
and " it is poetical per se," in which we think 
him right. His Lordship decompounds the wind 
into a caput mortuum of poetry, by making it 
howl through a pig-stye, instead of 

Roaming the illimitable ocean wide ; 

and turns a water-fall, or a clear spring, into a 
slop-bason, to prove that nature owes its ele- 
gance to art. His Lordship is (( ill at these 
numbers." Again, he affirms that the ruined 
temple of the Parthenon is poetical, and the 
coast of Attica, with Cape Colonna, and the 
recollection of Falconer's Shipwreck, classical. 
Who ever doubted it ? What then ? Does this 
prove that the Rape of the Lock is not a mock- 
heroic poem ? He assures us that a storm with 
cock-boats scudding before it is interesting, par- 
ticularly if this happens to take place in the 
Hellespont, over which the noble critic swam 5 
and makes it a question whether the dark 
cypress groves, or the white towers and minarets 

2 c 



3S6 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

of Constantinople, are more impressive to the 
imagination ? What has this to do with Pope's 
grotto at Twickenham, or the boat in which 
he paddled across the Thames to Kew ? Lord 
Byron tells us (and he should know) that the 
Grand Canal at Venice is a muddy ditch, without 
the stately palaces by its side ; but then it is 
a natural, not an artificial, canal 3 and finally, 
he asks, what would the desert of Tadmor be 
without the ruins of Palmyra, or Salisbury 
Plain without Stone-Henge ? Mr. Bowles, who, 
though tedious and teazing, has " damnable 
iteration in him," and has read the Fathers, 
answers very properly, by saying that a desert 
alone " conveys ideas of immeasurable distance, 
of profound silence, of solitude 3" and that 
Salisbury Plain has the advantage of Hounslow 
Heath, chiefly in getting rid of the ideas of 
artificial life, " carts, caravans, raree-showmen, 
butchers' boys, coaches with coronets, and livery 
servants behind them," even though Stone- 
Henge did not lift its pale head above its barren 
bosom. Indeed, Lord Byron's notions of art 
and poetry are sufficiently wild, romantic, far- 
fetched, obsolete: his taste is Oriental, Gothic ; 
his Muse is not domesticated ; there is nothing 
mimminee - pimminee, modern, polished, light, 
fluttering, in his standard of the sublime and 
beautiful : if his thoughts are proud, pampered, 
gorgeous, and disdain to mingle with the ob- 
jects of humble, unadorned nature, his lordly 



AND MR. BOWLES. 38? 

eye at least * keeps distance due" from the 
vulgar vanities of fashionable life 3 from drawing- 
rooms, from card-parties, and from courts. He 
is not a carpet poet. He does not sing the 
sofa, like poor Cowper. He is qualified neither 
for poet-laureate nor court-newsman. He is at 
issue with the Morning Post and Fashionable 
World on what constitutes the true pathos and 
sublime of human life. He hardly thinks Lady 
Charlemont so good as the Venus, or as an 
Albanian girl that he saw mending the road in 
the mountains. If he does not like flowers and 
forests, he cares as little for stars, garters, and 
princes' feathers, for diamond necklaces and 
paste buckles. If his Lordship cannot make 
up his mind to the quiet, the innocence, the 
simple, unalterable grandeur of nature, we are 
sure that he hates the frippery, the foppery, and 
pert grimace of art, quite as much. His Lord- 
ship likes the poetry, the imaginative part of 
art, and so do we ; and so we believe did the 
late Mr. John Scott. He likes the sombre part 
of it, the thoughtful, the decayed, the ideal, the 
spectral shadow of human greatness, the departed 
spirit of human power. He sympathizes not 
with art as a display of ingenuity, as the 
triumph of vanity or luxury, as it is connected 
with the idiot, superficial, petty self-complacency 
of the individual and the moment (these are 
to him not (i luscious as locusts, but bitter as 
coloquintida") ; but he sympathizes with the 



388 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

triumphs of Time and Fate over the proudest 
works of mail' — with the crumbling monuments 
of human glory — with the dim vestiges of 
countless generations of men — with that which 
claims alliance with the grave, or kindred with 
the elements of nature. This is what he calls 
art and artificial poetry. But this is not what 
anybody else understands by the terms, com- 
monly or critically speaking. There is as little 
connection between the two things as between 
the grand-daughters of Mr. Coutts, who ap- 
peared at court the other day, and Lady Godiva 
— as there is between a reigning toast and an 
Egyptian mummy. Lord Byron, through the 
whole of the argument, pelts his reverend op- 
ponent with instances, like throwing a stone at 
a dog, which the incensed animal runs after, 
picks up, mumbles between his teeth, and tries 
to see what it is made of. The question is, 
however, too tough for Mr. Bowles's powers of 
mastication, and, though the fray is amusing, 
nothing comes of it. Between the Editor of 
Pope and the Editor of the New Monthly 
Magazine, his Lordship sits 

— — high arbiter, 
And by decision more embroils the fray. 

What is the use of taking a work of art, 
from which " all the art of art is flown," a 
mouldering statue, or a fallen column in Tad- 
rnor's marble waste, that staggers and overawes 



AND MR. BOWLES. 3 89 

the mind, and gives birth to a thousand dim 
reflections, by seeing the power and pride of 
man prostrate and laid low in the dust ; what is 
there in this to prove the self-sufficiency of the 
upstart pride and power of man ? A ruin is 
poetical. Because it is a work of art, says 
Lord Byron. No, but because it is a work of 
art o'erthrown. In it we see, as in a mirror, 
the life, the hopes, the labour of man defeated, 
and crumbling away under the slow hand of 
time j and all that he has done reduced to 
nothing, or to a useless mockery. Or as one 
of the bread-and-butter poets has described the 
same thing a little differently, in his tale of 
Peter Bell the potter,— 

The stones and tower 
Seem'd fading fast away 
From human thoughts and purposes, 
To yield to some transforming power, 
And blend with the surrounding trees. 

If this is what Lord Byron means by artificial 
objects, there is an end of the question, for he 
will get no critic, no school to differ with him. 
But a fairer instance would be a snug citizen's 
box by the road-side, newly painted, plastered, 
and furnished, with every thing in the new 7 est 
fashion and gloss, not an article the worse for 
wear, and a lease of one-and-twenty years to 
run, and then let us see what Lord Byron, or 
his friend and " host of human life'' will make 



390 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

of it, compared with the desolation and the 
waste of all these comforts, arts, and elegances. 
Or let him take — not the pyramids of Egypt, 
but the Pavilion at Brighton, and make a 
poetical description of it in prose or verse. I 
defy him. The poetical interest, in his Lord- 
ship's transposed cases, arises out of the ima- 
ginary interest. But the truth is that, where 
art flourishes and attains its object, imagination 
droops, and poetry along with it. It ceases, or 
takes a different and ambiguous shape ; it may 
be elegant, ingenious, pleasing, instructive, but 
if it aspires to the semblance of a higher interest, 
or the ornaments of the highest fancy, it neces- 
sarily becomes burlesque, as for instance in the 
Rape of the Lock. As novels end with marriage, 
poetry ends with the consummation and success 
of art. And the reason (if Lord Byron would 
attend to it) is pretty obvious. Where all the 
wishes and wants are supplied, anticipated by art, 
there can be no strong cravings after ideal good 
nor dread of unimaginable evils $ the sources 
of terror and pity must be dried up : where the 
hand has done everything, nothing is left for 
the imagination to do or to attempt : where all 
is regulated by conventional indifference, the 
full workings, the involuntary, uncontrollable 
emotions of the heart cease : property is not a 
poetical, but a practical prosaic idea, to those who 
possess and clutch it, and cuts off others from 
cordial sympathy - 7 but nature is common pro- 



AND MR. BOWLES. 3Q1 

perty, the unenvied idol of all eyes, the fairy 
ground where fancy plays her tricks and feats ; 
and the passions, the workings of the heart 
(which Mr. Bowles very properly distinguishes 
from manners, inasmuch as they are not in the 
power of the will to regulate or satisfy), are 
still left as a subject for something very different 
from didactic or mock-heroic poetry. By art 
and artificial, as these terms are applied to 
poetry or human life, we mean those objects 
and feelings which depend for their subsistence 
snd perfection on the will and arbitrary conven- 
tions of man and society -, and by nature, and 
natural objects, we mean those objects which 
exist in the universe at large, without, or in 
spite of, the interference of human power and 
contrivance, and those interests and affections 
which are not amenable to the human will. 
That we are to exclude art, or the operation of 
the human will, from poetry altogether, is what 
we do not affirm 3 but we mean to say that where 
this operation is the more complete and mani- 
fest, as in the creation of given objects, or 
regulation of certain feelings, there the spring 
of poetry, i. e. of passion and imagination, is 
proportionably and much impaired. We are 
masters of Art, Nature is our master 5 and it is 
to this greater power that we find working 
above, without, and within us, that the genius 
of poetry bows and offers up its highest homage. 
If the infusion of art were not a natural dis~ 



39*2 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

qualifier for poetry, the most artificial objects 
and manners would be the most poetical : on 
the contrary, it is only the rude beginnings, or 
the ruinous decay of objects of art, or the sim- 
plest modes of life and manners, that admit of 
or harmonize kindly with, the tone and language 
of poetry. To consider the question otherwise 
is not to consider it too curiously, but not to 
understand it all. Lord Byron talks of Ulysses 
striking his horse Rhesus with his bow, as an 
instance of the heroic in poetry. But does not 
the poetical dignity of the instrument arise from 
its very commonness and simplicity ? A bow is 
not a supererogation of the works of art. It 
is almost peculiar to a state of nature, that is, 
the first and rudest state of society. Lord 
Byron might as well talk of a shepherd's crook, 
or the garland of flowers with which he crowns 
his mistress, as images borrowed from artificial 
life. He cannot make a gentleman-usher's rod 
poetical, though it is the pink of courtly and 
gentlemanly refinement. Will the bold stickler 
for the artificial essence of poetry translate 
Pope's description of Sir Plume,— 

Of amber-headed snuff-box justly vain, 
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane, — 

into the same sort of poetry as Homer's de- 
scription of the bow of Ulysses ? It is out of 
the question. The very mention of the last has 
a sound with it like the twang of the bow it' 



AND MR. BOWLES. 393 

self \ whereas the others, the snuff-box and 
€louded-cane, are of the very essence of effemi- 
nate impertinence. Pope says, in Spence's 
Anecdotes, that "a lady of fashion would ad- 
mire a star, because it would remind her of the 
twinkling of a lamp on a ball-night." This is a 
much better account of his own poetry than his 
noble critic has given. It is a clue to a real 
solution of the difficulty. What is the differ- 
ence between the feeling with which we con- 
template a gas-light in one of the squares, and 
the crescent moon beside it, but this— that 
though the brightness, the beauty perhaps, to 
the mere sense, is the same or greater, yet we 
know that when we are out of the square, we 
shall lose sight of the lamp, but that the moon 
will lend us its tributary light wherever we go ; 
it streams over green valley or blue ocean alike ; 
it is hung up in air, a part of the pageant of 
the universe ; it steals with gradual, softened 
state into the soul, and hovers, a fairy- appari- 
tion, over our existence ! It is this which makes 
it a more poetical object than a patent-lamp, or 
a Chinese lanthorn, or the chandelier at Covent- 
garden, brilliant as it is, and which, though it 
were made ten times more so, would still only 
dazzle and scorch the sight so much the more ; 
it would not be attended with a mild train of 
reflected glory ; it would " denote no foregone 
conclusion/' would touch no chord of imagina- 
tion or the heart ; it would have nothing ro- 



394 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

mantic about it. — A man can make any thing 
but he cannot make a sentiment ! It is a thing 
of inveterate prejudice, of old association, of 
common feeling, and so is poetry, as far as it is 
serious. A " pack of cards," a silver bodkin, 
a paste buckle, u may be imbued" with as much 
mock poetry as you please, by lending false 
associations to it ; but real poetry, or poetry of 
the highest order, can only be produced by un- 
ravelling the real web of associations, which 
have been wound round any subject by nature, 
and the unavoidable conditions of humanity. 
Not to admit this distinction at the threshold 
is to confound the style of Tom Thumb with 
that of the Moor of Venice, or Hurlothrumbo 
with the Doge of Venice. It is to mistake jest 
for earnest, and one thing for another. 

How far that little candle throws its beams ! 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 

The image here is one of artificial life ; but 
it is connected with natural circumstances and 
romantic interests, with darkness, with silence, 
with distance, with privation, and uncertain 
danger : it is common, obvious, without pre- 
tension or boast, and therefore the poetry found- 
ed upon it is natural, because the feelings are 
so. It is not the splendour of the candle itself, 
but the contrast to the gloom without, — the 
comfort, the relief it holds out from afar to the 
benighted traveller, — the conflict between nature 



AND MR. BOWLES. 395 

and the first and cheapest resources of art, that 
constitutes the romantic and imaginary, that is, 
the poetical interest, in that familiar but strik- 
ing image. There is more art in the lamp or 
chandelier 3 but, for that very reason, there is 
less poetry. A light in a watch-tower, a beacon 
at sea, is sublime for the same cause ; because 
the natural circumstances and associations set 
it off 5 it warns us against danger, it reminds 
us of common calamity, it promises safety and 
hope : it has to do with the broad feelings and 
circumstances of human life, and its interest 
does not assuredly turn upon the vanity or pre- 
tensions of the maker or proprietor of it. This 
sort of art is co-ordinate with nature, and 
comes into the first class of poetry, but no one 
ever dreamt of the contrary. The features of 
nature are great leading land-marks, not near 
and little, or confined to a spot, or an individual 
claimant 5 they are spread out everywhere the 
same, and are of universal interest. The true 
poet has therefore been described as 

Creation's tenant, he is nature's heir. 

What has been thus said of the man of 
genius might be said of the man of no genius. 
The spirit of poetry and the spirit of humanity 
are the same. The productions of nature are 
not locked up in the cabinets of the curious, 
but spread out on the green lap of earth. The 
flowers return with the cuckoo in the spring : 



396 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

the daisy for ever looks bright in the sun; the 
rainbow still lifts its head above the storm to 
the eye of infancy or age — 

So was it when my life began ; 

So is it now I am a man, 

So shall it be till I grow old and die ; 

but Lord Byron does not understand this, for he 
does not understand Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, 
and we cannot make him. His Lordship's na- 
ture, as well as his poetry, is something arabes- 
que and outlandish. — Again, once more, what, 
we would ask, makes the difference between an 
opera of Mozart's, and the singing of a thrush 
confined in a wooden cage at the corner of the 
street in which we live ? The one is nature, and 
the other is art : the one is paid for, and the 
other is not. Madame Fodor sings the air of 
Vedrai Carino in Don Giovanni so divinely be- 
cause she is hired to sing it ; she sings it to 
please the audience, not herself, and does not 
always like to be encored in it ; but the thrush 
that awakes us at day-break with its song does 
not sing because it is paid to sing, or to please 
others, or to be admired or criticised : it sings 
because it is happy: it pours the thrilling 
sounds from its throat, to relieve the overflow- 
ings of its own breast — the liquid notes come 
from, and go to, the heart, dropping balm inta 
it, as the gushing spring revives the traveller's 
parched and fainting lips. That stream of joy 
comes pure and fresh to the longing sense, free 



AND MR. BOWLES. 397 

from art and affectation ; the same that rises 
over vernal groves-, mingled with the breath of 
morning, and the perfumes of the wild hyacinth; 
that waits for no audience, that wants no re- 
hearsing, that exhausts its raptures, and is 
still— 

Hymns its good God, and carols sweet of love. 

There is this great difference between nature 
and art, that the one is what the other seems, 
and gives all the pleasure it expresses, because 
it feels it itself. Madame Fodor sings, as a 
musical instrument may be made to play a tune, 
and perhaps with no more real delight : but it 
is not so with the linnet or the thrush, that 
sings because God pleases, and pours out its 
little soul in pleasure. This is the reason why 
its singing is (so far) so much better than me- 
lody or harmony, than bass or treble, than the 
Italian or the German school, than quavers or 
crotchets, or half-notes, or canzonets, or quar- 
tetts, or any thing in the world but truth and 
nature ! 

To give one more instance or two of what we 
understand by a natural interest ingrafted on 
artificial objects, and of the principle that still 
keeps them distinct. Amelia's " hashed mut- 
ton" in Fielding is one that we might mention. 
Hashed mutton is an article in cookery, homely 
enough in the scale of art, though far removed 
from the simple products of nature $ yet we 



o98 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

should say that this common delicacy which 
Amelia provided for her husband's supper, and 
then waited so long in vain for his return, is the 
foundation of one of the most natural and affect- 
ing incidents in one of the most natural and 
affecting books in the world. — No description of 
the most splendid and luxurious banquet could 
come up to it. It will be remembered, when 
the Almanack des Gourmands, and even the 
article on it in the last Edinburgh Review, are 
forgotten. Did Lord Byron never read Boc- 
caccio ? We wish he would learn refinement 
from him, and get rid of his hard bravura taste, 
and swash-buckler conclusions. What makes 
the charm of the story of the Falcon? Is it 
properly art or nature ? The tale is one of arti- 
ficial life, and elegant manners, and chivalrous 
pretensions ; but it is the fall from these, the 
decline into the vale of low and obscure po- 
verty, — the having but one last loop left to 
hang life on, and the sacrifice of that to a feel- 
ing still more precious, and which could only 
give way with life itself, — that elevates the 
sentiment, and has made it find its way into all 
hearts. Had Federigo Alberigi had an aviary 
of hawks, and preserves of pheasants without 
end, he and his poor bird would never have been 
heard of. It is not the expense and ostentation 
of the entertainment he sets before his mistress, 
but the prodigality of affection, squandering 
away tl a last remains of his once proud for- 



AND MR. BOWLES. 399 

tunes, that stamps this beautiful incident on the 
remembrance of all who have ever read it. We 
wish Lord Byron would look it over again, and 
see whether it does not most touch the chords 
of pathos and sentiment in those places where 
we feel the absence of all the pomp and vanities 
of art. Mr. Campbell talks of a ship as a 
sublime and beautiful object in art. We will 
confess we always stop to look at the mail- 
coaches with no slight emotion, and, perhaps, 
extend our hands after some of them, in sign of 
gratulation. They carry the letters cf friends, 
of relations ; they keep up the communication 
between the heart of a country. We do not 
admire them for their workmanship, for their 
speed, for their livery — there is something more 
in it than this. Perhaps we can explain it by 
saying, that we once heard a person observe — 
(( I always look at the Shrewsbury mail, and 
sometimes with tears in my eyes : that is the 
coach that will bring me the news of the death 
of my father and mother. ' J His Lordshi™ wi^l 
say, the mail-coach is an artificial object, 
we think the interest here was not foundec 
that circumstance. There was a finer 
deeper link of affection that did not depe 
the red painted pannels, or the dyed gariru 
the coachman and guard. At least it i 
us so. 

This is not an easy subject to illustrat 
it is still more difficult to define. Yet'./ 



400 P0T-E, LORD BYRON, 

attempt something of the sort. 1. Natural ob- 
jects are common and obvious, and are imbued 
with an habitual and universal interest, without 
being vulgar. Familiarity in them does not 
breed contempt, as it does in the works of man. 
They form an ideal class j their repeated im- 
pression on the mind, in so many different cir- 
cumstances, grows up into a sentiment. The 
reason is, that we refer them generally and col- 
lectively to ourselves, as links and mementos of 
our various being 5 whereas, we refer the works 
of art respectively to those by whom they are 
made or to whom they belong. This distracts 
the mind in looking at them, and gives a petty 
and unpoetical character to what we feel relat- 
ing to them. When the works of art become 
poetical, it is when they are emancipated from 
this state of u circumscription and confine," by 
some circumstance that sets aside the idea of 
property and individual distinction. The sound 
of village bells, — 

The poor man's only music,* 

excites as lively an interest in the mind as the 
warbling of a thrush : the sight of a village 
spire presents nothing discordant with the sur- 
rounding scenery. 

2. Natural objects are more akin to poetry 
and the imagination, partly because they are 
not our own handy-work, but start up spon- 

* Coleridge 



AND MR. BOWLES. 401 

taneously, like a visionary creation, of their 
own accord, without our knowledge or con- 
nivance — 

The earth hath hubbies, as the water hath. 
And these are of them ; — 

and farther, they have this advantage over the 
works of art, that the latter either fall short of 
their pre-conceived intention, and excite our 
disgust and disappointment by their defects 5 
or, if they completely answer their end, they 
then leave nothing to the imagination, and so 
excite little or no romantic interest that way. 
A Count Rumford stove, or a Dutch oven, are 
useful for the purposes of warmth or culinary 
dispatch. Gray's purring favourite would find 
great comfort in warming its nose before the 
one, or dipping its whiskers in the other 5 and 
so does the artificial animal, man: but the 
poetry of Rumford grates or Dutch ovens it 
would puzzle even Lord Byron to explain. 
Cowper has made something of the ^loud- 
hissing urn," though Mr. Southey, as being one 
of the more refined " naturals," still prefers 
"the song of the kettle." The more our 
senses, our self-love, our eyes and ears, are sur- 
rounded, and, as it were, saturated with artifical 
enjoyments and costly decorations, the more the 
avenues to the imagination and the heart are 
unavoidably blocked up. We do not say that 
this may not be an advantage to the individual -? 
we say it is a disadvantage to the poet. Even 



402 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

"Mine Host of Human Life" has felt its 
palsying, enervating influence. Let any one 
(after ten years old) take shelter from a shower 
of rain in Exeter Change, and see how he will 
amuse the time with looking over the trinkets, 
the chains, the seals, the curious works of art. 
Compare this with the description of Una and 
the Red Cross Knight in Spenser : 

Enforc'd to seek some covert nigh at hand, 
A shady grove not far away they spied, 
That promis'd aid the tempest to withstand : 
Whose lofty trees, yclad with summer's pride, 
Did spread so broad that heaven's light did hide, 
Not pierceable with power of any star ; 
And all within were paths and alleys wide, 
With footing worn, and leading inward far ; 
Far harbour that them seems ; so in they entered are. 

And forth they pass, with pleasure forward led, 
Joying to hear the birds' sweet harmony, 
Which therein shrowded from the tempest's dread, 
Seem'd in their song to scorn the cruel sky. 
Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, 
The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall, 
The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, 
The builder oak, sole king of forests all, 
The aspen good for staves, the cypress funeraL* 

* Most people have felt the ennui of being detained 
under a gateway in a shower of rain. Happy is he who 
has an umbrella, and can escape when the first fury of the 
storm has abated. Turn this gateway into a broker's shop, 
full of second-hand furniture — tables, chairs, bedsteads, 
bolsters, and all the accommodations of man's life, — the 
case will not be mended. On the other hand, convert it 



AND MR. BOWLES. 403 

Artificial flowers look pretty in a lady's head- 
dress -, but they will not do to stick into lofty 
verse. On the contrary, a crocus bursting out 
of the ground seems to blush with its own golden 
light — "a thing of life." So a greater authority 
than Lord Byron has given his testimony on this 
subject-: " Behold the lilies of the field, they toil 
not, neither do they spin ; yet I say unto you, 
that even Solomon in all his glory was not ar- 
rayed like one of these." Shakspeare speaks of 

— Daffodils, 



That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty. 

All this play of fancy and dramatic interest 
could not be transferred to a description of hot- 
in to a wild natural cave, and we may idle away whole 
hours in it, marking a streak in the rock, or a flower that 
grows on the sides, without feeling time hang heavy on us. 
The reason is that, where we are surrounded with the 
works of man — the sympathy with the art and purposes 
of man, as it were, irritates our own will, and makes us 
impatient of whatever interferes with it : while, on the 
contrary, the presence of nature, of objects existing with- 
out our intervention and controul, disarms the will of its 
restless activity, and disposes us to submit to accidents that 
we cannot help, and the course of outward events, without 
repining. We are thrown into the hands of nature, and 
become converts to her power. Thus the idea of the 
artificial, the conventional, the voluntary, is fatal to the 
romantic and imaginary. To us it seems that the free 
spirit of nature rushes through the soul, like a stream with 
a murmuring sound, the echo of which is poetry. 

2 d 2 



404 POPE, LORD BYROX, 

house plants, regulated by a thermometer. Lord 
Byron unfairly enlists into the service of his 
argument those artificial objects which are di- 
rect imitations of nature, such as statuary, &c. 
This is an oversight. At this rate, all poetry 
would be artificial poetry. Dr. Darwin is among 
those who have endeavoured to confound the 
distinctions of natural and artificial poetry, and, 
indeed, he is, perhaps, the only one who has 
gone the whole length of Lord Byron's hyper- 
critical and super-artificial theory. Here are 
some of his lines, which have been greatly ad- 
mired : 

Apostrophe to Steel* 

Hail, adamantine steel ! magnetic lord, 

King of the prow, the ploughshare, and the sword ! 

True to the pole, by thee the pilot guides 

His steady course amid the struggling tides, 

Braves with broad sail the immeasurable sea, 

Cleaves the dark air, and asks no star but thee ! 

This is the true false gallop of the sublime. 
Yet steel is a very useful metal, and doubtless 
performs all these wonders. But it has not, 
among so many others, the virtue of amalga- 
mating with the imagination. We might quote 
also his description of the spinning-jenny, which 
is pronounced by Dr. Aikin to be as ingenious a 
piece of mechanism as the object it describes ; 
and, according to Lord Byron, this last is as well 
suited to the manufacture of verses as of cotton- 
twist without end. 



ANP MR. BOWLES. 405 

3. Natural interests are those which are real 
and inevitable, and are so far contradistinguished 
from the artificial, which are factitious and af- 
fected. If Lord Byron cannot understand the 
difference, he may find it explained by contrast- 
ting some of Chaucer's characters and incidents 
with those in the Rape of the Lock, for instance. 
Custance, floating in her boat on thewide sea, is 
different from Pope's heroine, 

Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames. 

Griselda's loss of her children, one by one, 
of her all, does not belong to the same class of 
incidents, nor of subjects for poetry, as Belinda's 
loss of her favourite curl. A sentiment that has 
rooted itself in the heart, and can only be torn 
from it with life, is not like the caprice of the 
moment — the putting on of paint and patches, 
or the pulling off a glove. The inbred charac- 
ter is not like a masquerade dress. There is a 
difference between the theatrical and natural, 
which is important to the determination of the 
present question, and which has been overlooked 
by his Lordship. Mr. Bowles, however, formally 
insists (and with the best right in the world) on 
the distinction between passion and manners. 
But he agrees with Lord Byron that the Epistle 
to Abelard is the height of the pathetic. 

Strange that such difference should be 
'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee. 

That it is in a great degree pathetic, I should 



406 POPE, LORD BYRON, 

be among the last to dispute ; but its character 
is more properly rhetorical and voluptuous. 
That its interest is of the highest or deepest 
order is what I should wonder to hear any one 
affirm who is intimate with Shakspeare, Chaucer, 
Boccaccio, our own early dramatists, or the Greek 
tragedians. There is more true, unfeigned, 
unspeakable, heartfelt distress in one line or 
Chaucer's tale just mentioned, 

Let me not like a worm go by the way, 

than in all Pope's writings put together ; and 
I say it without any disrespect to him, too 
Didactic poetry has to do with manners, as 
they are regulated, not by fashion or caprice, 
but by abstract reason and grave opinion, and 
is equally remote from the dramatic, which 
describes the involuntary and unpremeditated 
impulses of nature. As Lord Byron refers to 
the Bible, I would just ask him here, which he 
thinks the most poetical parts of it, the Law of 
the twelve tables, the book of Leviticus, &c. ; 
or the Book of Job, Jacob's dream, the story 
of Ruth, &c. ? 

4. Supernatural poetry is, in the sense here 
insisted on, allied to nature, not to art, because 
it relates to the impressions made upon the 
mind by unknown objects and powers, out of 
the reach both of the cognizance and will of 
man, and still more able to startle and confound 
his imagination, while he supposes them to exist, 



AXD MR. BOWLES. 407 

than either those of nature or art. The Witches 
in Macbeth, the Furies in iEschylus, are so far 
artificial objects that they are creatures of the 
poet's brain ; but their impression on the mind 
depends on their possessing attributes which 
baffle and set at nought all human pretence, and 
laugh at all human efforts to tamper with them. 
Satan in Milton is an artificial or ideal character : 
but would any one call this artificial poetry ? It 
is, in Lord Byron's phrase, super-artificial, as well 
as super-human poetry. But it is serious business. 
Fate, if not Nature, is its ruling genius. The 
Pandemonium is not a baby-house of the fancy, 
and it is ranked (ordinarily) with natural, i. e. 
with the highest and most important order of 
poetry, and above the Rape of the Lock. I 
intended a definition, and have run again into 
examples. Lord Byron's concretions have spoiled 
me for philosophy. 



THE END. 



B. BENSLEY, PRINTER, 



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